


Someday, Home

by vehlek



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Angst, Creampie, Cunnilingus, Doggy Style, Drama, F/M, Human/Pokemon Relationship(s), Kissing, Light Femdom, Masturbation, Pining, Pokephilia, Pokémon are sentient, Smut, but they can't talk, unless they're mildly psychic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-04-12 12:00:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19131598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vehlek/pseuds/vehlek
Summary: A Ninetales and her trainer, her closest friend, clearing out their ruined childhood home. Working together to build their future within it.A Ninetales, her trainer, and his girlfriend beside him. The woman who he chose.It's autumn.Taika hates the cold.(Old commission for Zenkopan from FA)





	1. Chapter 1

When they were young, it was a boy and his girl. A girl and her best friend. And just down the hill, a boy’s true love. One of them got the first kiss of her crush, another got himself a girlfriend, and the last was a Vulpix. She got an ice stone.

Now it’s nine wispy white tails that sway in the wind from behind Taika’s storm of blue fur. Her eyes are set forward, deep and bright, frozen. Of the great wisps flowing down atop her scalp, just a hair clip nearly too small for her, its girlish little gems hidden behind the bulk of her ear, now tucks away those few shorter hairs otherwise ready to slip down her cheek.

It’s cold out here. Autumn. No snow yet, and she hopes not for months longer. Any given day, her body is already a blizzard out of motion.

Taika hates the cold.

“Watch the doorframe—watch the—you’re going to scrape your arm, Haddy. Watch the frame.”

“I’m watching the _god_ -damn fucking frame, Rikhard! You’re not helping!”

Two humans with their coats off, sleeves up, and gloves on are carrying a terribly sentimental sofa out of what may yet be their home. Taika sits on her hindquarters in the cool, unclipped weeds of the lawn out front as she watches this scene, careful only not to get in their way. She has only paws. And paws don’t help to lift or carry.

It’s a bit on the nose, even for her, but the weeds are absolutely where she needs to stay currently. Because Taika doesn’t do drama.

“We’re putting it in the truck, right? Are we putting it in the truck?”

“Ground. The ground. Just put it—lay your side down, and I’ll—careful, Haddy—”

“—Rikhard, I am _already_ being careful. Why aren’t we putting it in your truck?”

“Bags go in the truck right now. We can set a tarp over it later for rain, so now we’ll just—we’ll set it down, careful—”

“—Rikhard I _swear_ to God.”

Grunting, and then two corners of this moldy old sofa hit the grass. A chill breeze flits through the wisps of Taika’s tails, and it’s all the motion within or without her as she watches the humans stand straight again, wipe their brows, breathe great sighs each.

The woman’s name is Hadewych, actually. Only Rikhard calls her Haddy. The W is pronounced more like a V, sometimes. It depends on her mood whether she’ll correct anyone on it. And Hadewych… is pretty. Tall, fashionable, slightly foreign—even more so than Taika. Taika gets to say she was born here. Hadewych got to sweep her hair back over her shoulder and introduce herself in fourth grade as the pretty new transfer student to all the boys, Taika imagines, to those who ogled and those who didn’t. She’s a natural match for someone as classically beautiful.

“Fuckin’... whatever,” Hadewych says, swiping the crook of her elbow over her face to brush away stray silken hairs caught out from her ponytail. She snorts a quicker breath. Then she casts her gaze aside, lowers her voice.

“Sorry I yelled.”

The man of these two humans, the one aside Hadewych and Taika both… he slips his gloves off and rubs at the back of his neck under the collar of his shirt, simple fabric nestled tight over all the body unhidden by his coat. He sighs, then mutters the same.

“Sorry I patronized you.”

Rikhard is…

Taika shivers and clutches her paws a moment over cold soil and stems. This breeze is uncomfortable.

Rikhard is Hadewych’s natural match. And Hadewych is his.

Sitting across from people like these—fully formed, emotional, in constant pursuit of life’s adventures—Taika’s role is a supporting one. Any more would be… exhausting, surely.

So she gives just a smile. And she speaks next.

_“You should trust Hadewych more, Rikhard. She was being more careful than you.”_

Taika’s words come through her mind, and her voice is like an echo. Gentle. Something soft whispered not through but underneath thin air, a single thought she reaches purposefully into the minds of Rikhard and Hadewych like a whisper both out of reach and crystal clear.

Without looking back to her, Rikhard snorts a laugh. He smiles. Shakes his head. He mutters, “That’s fair.”

Then he looks back to Taika a moment. Just a glance.

And he turns to Hadewych next, and through this real smile, he says, “I’m sorry, Haddy. Really.”

Hadewych glances Taika’s way, too, but her jaw is set. The look in her eyes is something not kind. She stretches her shoulder in a circle and looks back to Rikhard, saying, “Didn’t you used to have buddies around here I never hung out with? Like, guy friends? With legitimate muscles?”

Rikhard shrugs. “Yeah, but they all hated me, so no.”

Hadewych rests her arm back at her side again, either rid of the kinks there or well enough distracted from them. “You mean those bullies? Didn’t you used to know other boys before I moved here?”

With his sleeves rolled up as far as they are, Rikhard’s biceps flex naturally through the motion of simply lowering his arm back to his side. He chuckles, “Nah. Not like you made any more friends. I used to be a beanpole, Haddy—you forget the good old days when everything sucked?”

Everything?

Taika’s polite little smile stays put, but she keeps to herself whatever thoughts on that crystallize.

Hadewych slips her gloves off, too. She stays where she is to collect the rest of her breath, but the look in her eyes as she watches the same unintentional flex in Rikhard’s body is somehow the same as if she sauntered over and felt the skin and bone for herself.

“I remember arm wrestling,” she says. “And winning. And then I remember how much hard work you put into getting swollen.”

“Swole.”

“Either, big boy.”

She’s not subtle. There’s a risque tint to the pitch Hadewych says this in that’s not entirely meant for Rikhard, as if the phrase is a prize to show off. But Taika sees the smaller, reddened crease in Rikhard’s grin at how Hadewych says it, and even when the poor grown boy won’t brag about it for himself, he doesn’t complain being spoken of like that.

“Hey.”

Taika snaps back to attention with the barest accidental look of surprise, and there’s Hadewych looking back at her dead on, arms folded, hips pitched to the side as she rests her weight on one leg.

“Anything you can actually do to help, or something? Like, you want to actually do something?”

Taika’s paws have grown colder than they should sitting on the ground for this long, but she sits demure still. She opens the words in her mind, but before they coalesce, Rikhard speaks for her anyway.

“She’s got paws, Haddy, not hands.”

“Rikhard, I _know_ she has—”

Hadewych stops herself, holds back that instant scowl. She holds her breath. Sighs it back out.

“I shouldn’t have snapped. And you’re right. But I was asking her if she could think of some other way she could actually help so it’s not just the two of us doing all the work in a home for all **_f_** _u_ **c** k ** _i_** _n_ **g** three of us.”

Just as quick, Hadewych looks to Taika again with a crease in her lips unforgiving after all, and she taps one finger over her temple. One of those words didn’t make it past her lips.

“ _Out_ , Taika. I can still hear you breathing in my head, or whatever it is.”

Taika tilts her head to the left and slims her grin in a pleasant little _so-sorry_ way, well meaning, too polite for anyone else to stay mad at.

_“I’m sorry for entering your mind a bit early, Hadewych. I was going to suggest that if you thought it would be helpful, I could sort through the rest of the smaller items for what’s still salvageable. Then you two could bag up what’s not.”_

Taika pulls the reach of her own mind back out from Hadewych’s after she finishes talking. Thus, without a telepathic link to overhear anything, the expression on Hadewych’s lips of just how mightily she’s unimpressed truly speaks for itself.

“Why not,” she says. She lifts both arms and lets them slap limp back into her sides. “It’s something.”

Continuing a tradition longstanding at this point, Rikhard looks between his girls with a steady brow while whatever words occur to him keep hidden under his tongue. With a heavy crunch of his rain boots, he turns back to the house and says nothing.

But from where Taika sits, he passes within arm’s reach of her on his way back inside. He walks straight and proud, nearly twice as tall as her but never once looking down upon her. He looks to her again as he passes, and his fingers reach closer—to her head, _to her cheek?_ —before curling away just as easily.

He gives her a thumbs-up instead, and his grin fades to something silly. Nothing serious.

Taika’s still got her smile to offer back to him. Because after all these years, they still get along so well.

Hadewych follows Rikhard at a step behind, and she doesn’t spare even a glance passing by.

 ** _f_** uc **k _i_ n** _g_ _**p**_ a _w_ ** _s_** s **w _e_ _a_ r** _t_ **o c** h ** _r_** _i_ s ** _t_ _o_** n _a_ **s _t_ _i_ c**k

Well—now she does. She glares back at Taika, finger tapping quick and hard back over her temple, and as she turns away again, her ponytailed tresses whip over her shoulder with her.

Taika pulls her mind away again, following. Listening in—just overhearing, really—it’s a reflex. It’s accidental, sometimes. Usually.

So she enters the house last, her tails all brushing through the doorframe behind her at a soft, accustomed squish—but it’s just back inside that she pauses again with Rikhard and Hadewych.

Just like them... she needs to start over for a moment.

This was Rikhard’s mother’s home. And so Rikhard’s, and Taika’s, too. She was here the whole time. This is where she and he grew up. Rikhard’s mother is in a nursing home now, and… she always had problems. Everyone does, but some more so than others.

But even when they were all here, it was never this bad before.

 **LIVING ROOM.**  
**STATUS: HORRIFYING.**

It’s cup-your-hands-over-your-mouth-and-gasp horrible. If hands are available. But no one breathes too hard. There’s a stink of grease and rot and mildew in here, and it won’t go. Maybe not for a long time.

Rikhard stands silent one long moment. Maybe just stoic. Hadewych coughs into her shoulder and breathes through her sleeve as she tugs her gloves back on already. Taika wrinkles her black button nose instinctually the same, but that’s from a mere discomfort. Smelling isn’t as painful as looking.

The remaining furniture is hidden. The living space is gone. Every letter, card, bill, and magazine from the last ten years is still here, all stacked precarious on or already fallen off the console behind where the sofa was just pulled from. And there’s more of all that in the kitchen. In the bedrooms. The bathrooms. Thrift store paintings and big empty frames are leaned against the walls in no particular order, broken fans and room heaters and a dusty chandelier helping to prop them up. Everywhere else are beer cans, glass bottles, and piles of bottle caps knocked over and scattered under the rest. And at the far side of the room, a single pile of flat cardboard shipping boxes are stacked from floor to literal ceiling, the straightest of anything in sight. The lower half of the stack is long since waterlogged.

There’s a television, too, just like in a normal living room... but half the screen has empty or unopened boxes from online orders stacked against it. One of the two chairs on either side of where the sofa was has a broken leg. Both are equally covered in clothes, blankets, and old curtains. Now that the one piece of furniture where two younger friends used to crowd next to each other on to watch mature, scary movies is gone—the one comfortable place for her in most all this house—there’s nowhere left to sit.

Every young memory Taika has is trapped in these walls. Family used to be here. And now for the safety of their lungs and mental health together, most of it needs to be discarded.

It’s a shame, but life happens. Sometimes life has bad ideas. Sometimes people do. You don’t always grow up how you wanted to, even if you worked for it.

Rikhard sighs. Taika looks back to him, but he stares ahead. His shoulders loosen.

“Back to work.”

Thus is their call. With an old squeak over the floorboards, Hadewych takes the lead. Then Rikhard. Then Taika.

Rikhard and Hadewych wind their way to the pile of boxes at the far side of the room, squeezing through the slight path they’ve cleared already, while Taika tiptoes through the same way, but instead steps slender legs high over a spill from the uniformly unkempt piles of books just by the television.

It’s not really the books that need immediate inspection. They all look to be in poor shape. She spies on top of them, however, some photo albums.

Well… photo album. The inset picture on the cover remains the stock photo from when it was first purchased, but a single wrinkly brown splash has stained its bottom corners completely. The work of a single glass of bourbon, or just beer, what hands that held the glass grown clumsy in worsened age.

Because if Rikhard’s mother wanted photographs ruined on purpose, she’d have simply taken her lighter to them. Admirably direct.

Taika tips her view lower and peers at the spines of the books below, but yes, they’re just old romance novels and extra cookbooks. The stain has leaked down through the whole pile— unsalvageable top to bottom.

So she lifts her chin back over the album, taps a paw under the edge of the cover, and gently, carefully, like looking for secrets, pulls the binding open.

It’s empty. Stained, but never used. The protective sheet on the first page has never even been peeled.

Taika’s frown finds its wry edge.

“ _Tails_ , bright eyes. Move ’em.”

It’s not the voice, but the tone that really gives her away. Taika looks back over her shoulder, and there’s Hadewych back with a glare already, one empty cardboard box in both her arms. Taika lifts all the wisps of her storm out of the way, and Hadewych dumps the box with a tiny, scratchy thump in the space left behind. Pats her gloves off on each other.

“Junk box,” she says. “Tell us when you actually need a keep box.”

While it’s a safe assumption Taika takes that other words were left unspoken this time, she smiles again anyway, big and polite. The tone of voice that comes out her mind is just as sugar sweet.

_“Thank you, Hadewych. When I need another, would you prefer that I ask, or whine pitifully?”_

A moment more of silence as Hadewych’s gaze slims. The look of, if Taika were to guess on this one, _You fucking would_. Rikhard shakes open another garbage bag behind them, but doesn’t glance back at his mention—he didn’t get to hear that one. So Hadewych rolls her eyes, turns, steps over more clutter on her way back toward him.

Taika noses the album shut, clasps the half unsullied in jaw, and discards it in her brand new box, just for her.

 

 

There’s more than one answer for how they all got this far. How they got here. Or maybe less answers, and more separate little stories all bundled toward the same present day.

Taika’s is a life of loosely connected events, most days. Most nights.

There are two tents set up now in the yard near the truck. It’s dark out. Taika lies alone in her own tent of the two, curled up on her side, tails crowding her own personal bubble, cool escaped wisp atop her brow tickling just over her eye. Some nights she tries blowing it out of the way, remembering perfectly well the shape of her face doesn’t accommodate that.

She takes a deep breath, and with one such puff of air out her lips, all she’s made is a quick sigh. Her wisp remains.

If not for the tiny hair clip holding back an even greater bundle, this might be _infuriating_.

She sighs again, slower this time.

It’s nights like these she finds it hardest to sleep.

Not on the road anymore, no front seat to share beside another warm body, pulled over off the highway across miles of tundra and no hostel around for a hundred more. Blankets. Head rested on lap across the single bench seat they share. Pretending she’s already asleep, drifting off only now underneath the soft motions of his long, heavy chest, the cool, quietest breaths beneath green eyes softly shut, dreaming now.

Tomorrow, back on the road toward a tournament. No teammates. Single-entry competitions, no matter the lower payouts, and so it’s simply fighter and coach making their way across the country while one’s girlfriend attends college back in some city, back at their shared apartment, back somewhere a world away that’s not Taika’s.

There’s no such horizon in the night. So this night goes on forever. Right until she really does drift to sleep, eyes heavy, chest warm. And it takes all night.

So with another sigh, Taika pushes her legs forward and stretches in the dark of her tent, spreading her toes taut, scrunching her whole snout through a silent grunt. Then she loosens. And she blinks. The moon is so bright through the tent fabric, and her nose still itches from her own white wisp drifted lower over it.

Despite the cold, it’s still not cold enough for a blanket over her this night. No, just her fur keeps her warm. “Warm.” Warm enough.

But still too cold.

The tent just over from hers—that’s Rikhard’s. Hadewych’s. They get to share now. The only sounds tonight between any of them are the pulling of sheets as either of them shifts about in their tent, trying to get to sleep.

This is their first night at their new house, Hadewych reminded. Something special and important to her, so they all spend it here. Here-ish. But it won’t be like this every night. Tomorrow, they’ll go just down the hill to where Hadewych’s mother still lives, down along where the woods still run thick, long before the first trudge of nearby civilization, and that’s where they’ll be the coming months as it gets even colder out.

Somehow, Taika’s invited too.

She snorts, nearly blowing away this insidious wisp. She doesn’t paw it away. It becomes a battle this time of night, so no cheating.

It was five years of training and traveling and more still to come… and then a call to the closest relative the nurse had any contact information for: Rikhard. Because his mother was in no legal shape to manage her own affairs anymore.

Right there is an even littler story that leads to now.

Maybe it goes longer, really, but that’s as little as Taika feels like remembering it.

Her paw twitches. She restrains it from her brow.

Then her ear twitches. There’s more than a shifting in the tent over from her.

It’s a rustling now, sheet or blankets not just shifting but rolling away. Then it’s a whisper. Several whispers. Giggly, feminine. Then a voice deeper. Quiet enough that they think they’re unheard, trying to keep themselves shushed, but—

Then it’s a low, girlish growl. In want.

It’s only silhouettes visible through either tent, but from this position, Taika sees one rise above another, sheets rustling farther away from their forms. One dim figure straddling another while whispers and growls grow closer between each, so imagination assures.

Strangely enough, at this exact moment, there’s grown a complete and utter kink in Taika’s side that she can’t bear resting on any further. It’s maddening. So quieter, quiet enough that she’s truly still unnoticed, she rolls over away from the other tent.

And the wisp flits right back in place over her nose.

There’s usually a wall between them at this point, at least. With that, at least, it’s more difficult to imagine the people nearby so... nude.

Or just shirtless? Or maybe they’re still taking those off. On their own, off each other, either way.

It doesn’t hurt anyone just to imagine, does it? She knows it doesn’t. It can’t.

Unasleep, Taika closes her eyes.

Hadewych would be the one climbed on top. Too confident to be denied, to be unwanted—there’s a deserved allure in her smirk down at Rikhard as she puts on a show for him, fabric slipping off her wrists just now as shirt comes away, just enough moon in the night to glow upon every curve she opens to her lover.

Just enough light to see Rikhard watch her. Hands rubbing up and down the bare, cool skin of her waist, warming her already. His eyes go down her form all the way to legs spread, thighs straddled over his groin, and come all the way back up to her hands, where she tousles her hair back over her shoulders before drifting them down like shadow to his shirt, sliding it off of him.

His hem lifts away from his face—with a kiss, surely. She leans herself down to his level and brushes lips, open and full, over his jaw. Breathes him in, nibbles, glides to his lips for the overture they arrange together. A sweetest kiss. Quiet now. His hands move to her cheeks and hot breath gasps over her skin, and together they keep this all to themselves, playing, begging, whispering meaningless and full of need. Without breaking the heat they build, her hand reaches down between her legs, past them, fiddles open the tie of his sweatpants, slips fingers lithe and ready underneath for molten manifest urges rumbling in her very hand. She rubs him full. Hard. More every second, he’s throbbing. All for her. She’s the only one who could do this to him. The _only_ one. And she edges forward, quits playing at the straddle, and there’s only one thought left in her head that can keep up with how messy they dance through their kiss:

 ** _in_ si _d_** e _,_ _e_ v **e _r_** _y_ i _n_ ** _c_ _h_**

Taika’s eyes bolt back open, sweat beading too warm over her limbs. She blinks. Her own lungs pant heavy through her lips.

Here she is in her own tent again. Alone.

She drags her warmer paw back up before her chest the next instant. That didn’t just happen. Nobody noticed. It’s just a reflex.

She _really_ didn’t mean to do that.

All nine of her tails huddle closer around her as Taika shrinks herself deeper in her tent, and as her wisp tickles again over her eye, she bats it away.

It doesn’t matter. She’s never won against it.

She thinks of anything else to get through the night. Prime numbers? Anything. But no more memories. She can’t afford them.

She won’t get much sleep tonight.

 

 

Tomorrow, it’s back to cleaning the horror.

Or they would be.

Ramshackle the house may be, but these musty windows still hold up against the torrent of rain pelting steadily down the panes. It’s a storm. The dregs of the season before the snow comes and everyone chains up their car tires.

Inside, that huge patter along the roof is all that goes said. There are no wrinkled noses today. The smells are unfortunately regular to the party already. And they’re all here, but not working—cuddled up on the floor for lunch, on break, hoping to wait out the rain. Except Hadewych’s in the middle of their cuddle. Thus, that’s who Rikhard’s cuddled up against.

And on her other side, also Taika.

Hadewych was the one who sat down first, right in the middle of what little space they’ve yet cleared in the living room, so… she called dibs.

At least she hasn’t complained about fluffy tails crowding her on the one side. Taika needs the space.

Lunch is burgers for all. Not homemade. The stovetop doesn’t even have electricity, because what’s the point of paying for it again yet? No, it’s fast food. Not traditional, either, but in these modern days, that’s typical. Rikhard’s already dug in, both hands bundled around the wrapper while he chomps out nearly square bites. Hadewych’s munching smaller and quieter, frowning as ever as with her other hand she holds out Taika’s burger for her. Taika has to stretch forward a bit to reach the taking of her own bites, but it’s fine. This is nearly a peace offering.

With this loud quiet of the rain, Taika doesn’t even have to worry about how noisily she chews. And her lunch is good. She sighs through her nostrils, letting herself slouch comfortably in this moment found.

“Wish we had a porch for days like this.”

Taika glances left, and Rikhard’s lowered his burger for a glance out the window. His coat’s off again, just skin and bone tucked clear and wide under his shirt. Toward the rain, he smiles.

“Big sitdown like this, but out under a big, long awning, watching the storm from up close.”

Taika swallows, but leans in for another bite while she indulges in speaking up at the same time. _“What if it were thundering?”_

Rikhard’s eyes join the look in his smile. “Even better.”

Hadewych says nothing still, just munches through lips pursed tight. Her jacket’s slid down and bunched demurely at her elbows, just a sliver of skin showing between its sleeves and those of her t-shirt, but she hasn’t yet removed it today before there’s sweaty work to get to.

That’s what Taika sees plain enough. But when Rikhard looks back over to both girls, all he eyes is the proximity between them. Grin still easy, he nudges Hadewych in the shoulder—bumping her that inch closer against Taika.

“Good mood, huh? Look at you two, getting along together. I like that.”

Hadewych merely busts a move back away from Taika, batting at the bundle of tails crowding from behind, mostly succeeding at grazing her hand right through them. Upon settling down in a moment more, she grunts back to Rikhard, “You’re funny.”

Taika has nowhere else to resettle her tails, however. There’s the mildew-taken chandelier on her other side strewn beside long-empty bottles and dirty magazines (not that kind, but one can wish), and a console table overfilled on every surface behind her. So Taika’s bulk fluffs right back down behind Hadewych, and for just this once, for a day like this, the furrier of the two lays her head over the other’s shoulder and sighs wide and silly through her snout, her sighing the same through words, _“Or maybe this is the start of something beautiful….”_

Right here, then. In this moment, all of a sudden, was it Taika’s tone, her closeness, or something else that provided the last straw?

With a scowl ripped just as fast across her face, Hadewych twists her whole body around and shoves Taika away with both hands, hard as she can, yelling, “Would you _stop_?”

Taika tumbles against the chandelier through her recoil, spindly arms jabbing across her back and scraping through her fur, bottles clattering all around. Pain winces through her face, but mostly her look is eyes wide and nervous, locked back against Hadewych’s, still leering. Both their lunches are spilled all over the floor between them.

“Haddy, what the _hell_ —?”

Rikhard sets away his burger and pushes to his feet in an instant. His whole frame flexes through the motion of his rise, but without anger to match. There’s just the shock in his voice.

Hadewych shoots a look back to him and yells still, “If she doesn’t like getting touched then she shouldn’t touch _me_!”

“What are you, twelve?" Rikhard says. "She was teasing you, Christ!”

“Well, I don’t _fucking_ appreciate her sense of humor,” Hadewych spits.

“Sense of…? Haddy, she was just _teasing_. You don’t need to fucking shove her for that. Taika, are you okay? Fuck, did that stuff cut—?”

 _“I’m fine,”_ Taika says quickly, pushing herself back to her feet prim and proper, fluffing her tails back into the most grace they can find through the dust and grime they’ve gotten smeared over. There’s only a stinging hidden under her fur, so it’s fine. Those are the only words she can comprehend to diffuse the situation. _“I’m fine, don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”_

But by the look remaining on Rikhard’s and Hadewych’s faces both, there is no diffusing here. Rikhard looks back to Hadewych, settling thick hands over either side of his waist, and says, “Haddy, I get you don’t ever want to buddy up with Taika, but that was—you can’t just fucking shove her. In _here_ , too—she could have seriously hurt herself on something.”

In a look gone from the kind of fury directed at a person to the kind of fury simply at the shit with which one must put up, Hadewych lifts her chin and glowers at the ceiling, anywhere but at someone. Her lips tighten. She hugs her arms loose over her knees and looks back over to Rikhard next, not Taika, and says over a growl once again contained, “You’re right. I’m sorry. Okay?”

At just that, the barest hint of a conflict concluding, Rikhard’s entire posture softens. But in this little fight, at least, it doesn’t end yet. He lowers his voice.

“Haddy, come on, be real… you’ve been going completely aggro on Taika the whole past week. What’s even going on?”

In a snap even more sudden and bitter than the first, Hadewych says, “Moving into your first home together with the guy you love is supposed to be about _two_ people coming together, Rikhard, not _three_.”

And she hushes herself right after.

As for Rikhard, hearing that, Taika sees it before he says it—she, once again on the sidelines, looking in—the look of utter confusion on his face. Not getting it. Just not getting it.

“Okay, well, uh… what do you expect Taika to do about that?”

Hadewych doesn’t say another word. There’s just the patter of rain against the windows for whatever she could say.

“She’s how I make a living,” Rikhard says. “I’m how she makes a living. We need each other. Me and Taika are a team, Haddy. That’s how it works.”

Taika merely watches these two in their latest little fight. There’s another look on Hadewych’s face, or beneath it, one that only Taika could read if she tried—a hundred conflicting thoughts on what she wants to say, probably, what she wants to scream, what words she can only silently consider would make things better or worse—but reading those is no way Taika can help.

Taika can’t help here. Even about her, these little fights never concern her.

The stinging across her back is already fading, anyway.

But Hadewych finds the right words in just a moment more, apparently.

“Without a mortgage hanging over our heads, my future income could support us both,” she mutters. “Us _all_ , whatever.”

Rikhard lifts one hand over his neck, rubbing, looking away from either of his girls. He says only slightly higher, “Were you expecting us to quit training when we moved in here?”

“I was expecting her to be less of a third wheel every waking minute,” Hadewych says.

Not incredulously, but like there’s really no mystery to uncover here, Rikhard looks back to his girlfriend and really says this, truly:

“How is Taika a third wheel?”

Taika and Hadewych both look back up to him, and while they don’t share the same expression, there’s a look in their eyes both the exact same. This time, it’s Taika who says, _“Rikhard, we’re all under a lot of stress from this work, and I’m fine, so—”_

“No, Taika, that’s definitely not fair to you,” Rikhard says, finding the tone to stand his ground for this. “You know when to clear some space when Haddy and me need some time alone. You said that before. You’re not a busybody.”

Hadewych rolls her eyes over a scowl. “Well, maybe _I_ need more space away from her than the eight hours I’m unconscious every night.”

“Okay, fine, well—”

Rikhard swings his other hand up from his hip and gestures it toward Taika, making a point, making a face like this is the most simple answer he’s just come up with. “Taika, when we’ve got more of this stuff cleaned out of the way and it’s not pouring outside, would you mind giving Haddy a little more space for a while?”

Taika doesn’t answer this time either.

Ever since Rikhard and Hadewych got closer in their high school days—it’s been like this for far longer than the past week.

Best that he’s never noticed when Hadewych first reached the depths of her animosity, maybe.

Taika just looks away.

“I get it,” Hadewych says. “I’m the one being the crazy bitch. Trust me. I get it.”

Disregarding the need for a response, she leans back over the mess she made of lunch and scrapes the spill back into a wrapper, utterly avoiding any glance near Taika.

“You’re not crazy, and you’re not a bitch,” Rikhard says. “I’m just trying to understand why you’re angry.”

Actually—now there’s one glance. Hadewych looks up from her cleaning, looks dead on at Taika, stares for one long moment. Taika meets her dim gaze, and there’s a feeling other than stinging all the way down her spine not to look away.

Even without telepathy… it almost feels like a real conversation between them.

Then Hadewych looks back up to Rikhard.

“I really don’t want to be a total stereotype, but sometimes it’s just reasons you can’t understand, okay?” She shrugs, wipes the rest of her expression with a self-aimed smirk. “Maybe it’s bipolar. I’ll get that looked at or something.”

Rikhard stares blankly at her. Then he drops his hands, shrugs just the same as her. Things have been made better now, right? The fight’s over. It’s resolved. Taika doesn’t need to hear his thoughts to read his face. So Rikhard leans back down to the floor and scoops up his own burger, but rather than taking the last two bites of it, he offers it instead between Hadewych and Taika both.

Taika just shakes her head, demure and polite. Hadewych crinkles up all the last of the spill within the two wrappers and tugs her gloves out from the pocket of her jacket, saying for perhaps her and Taika both, “Let’s just get back to work.”

Maybe elsewhere, another time, Taika and Hadewych could have toasted to that. Maybe not. Taika can’t hear whatever feeling beats in Hadewych’s chest like she can hear the thoughts vibrating in her brain—but knowing the feeling anyway, Taika could never blame her for it.

It’s ridiculous that either of them ever fell for such a dense man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lamenting AO3's lack of different fonts available. In the original Google Doc I had a nice serif cambria for Taika's thoughts and a whole ugly mess of fonts for when she reads others'. But I hope bold and italics make it clear enough when Taika's speaking or when she's overhearing something!


	2. Chapter 2

Coming home to someone else’s. It hasn’t yet gotten so old, but it feels like Taika may just have to get used to it.

Or like she never will.

“Welcome home, honey! Welcome back, Rikhard. Hello, Taika.”

The tone that Hadewych’s mother uses is chipper throughout her most regular greeting, but Taika notes again how quickly she rattles through it toward the end. It’s normal. It makes sense. There’s dinner on the stove for her to get back to, and that warm, cozy aroma has already wafted directly toward the three new homeowners-in-practice (two, don’t be silly) arriving back at the house Hadewych grew up in partially.

By now, most of the garbage in the living room back in Rikhard’s and Taika’s home—thus, most of the things in that living room—has been cleaned out.

A month at cleaning, now? Shorter? Longer? It’s been some time. Work goes on, however long it takes.

So while Rikhard and Hadewych both slip their boots or shoes off, it’s between a big, warm hug offered to each that Hadewych’s mother says, “I hope you three are hungry. I’ve got dinner simmering right now and it’s going to be ready in just a few more minutes. That sound good?”

Taika just makes sure she can comfortably pull her tails out of their way for the hugging part. Her storm of blue emanates in nearly all directions when she isn’t consciously taming it all, two or three tails twisting constantly at the tip as if some last breath of the autumn breeze still has them in perpetuity. She only needs to wipe her paws here, anyway.

“Sounds _great_. We’re starving,” Rikhard says, returning just one arm, much longer, for his hug. Two pats on future-mother-in-law’s back, good and genuine and snug, and he steps out of the way to give Hadewych the room for the longer sort of hug with her mother.

The particular phrases of daughterly love and the usual thanks for letting them stay over from Hadewych escape Taika’s exact notice. That’s their business, that sort of thing. It’s been another arduous day for all, and not even her own particulars can Taika recollect already.

But for Hadewych, it seems, there’s one whisper extra at the tail end of her and her mother’s hug that Taika notices. Or maybe a mutter, loosed under eyes shut tight and arms wrapped still over her mother’s shoulders:

“Makes me wish Daddy was still here.”

Taika doesn’t realize she’s staring up at them until her gaze falls any other direction, so she means only to further remove herself from obstruction as her shoulder squeezes past both their waists on her way out the entryway, getting out of their hair. But a burning reaches her face regardless.

It’s not her role to elaborate that relationship.

And Rikhard, for his part… just rubs a hand over his girlfriend's shoulder. He keeps any real expression particularly contained. He's hardly any better joining in here.

Hadewych's mother pats her daughter on the back anyway. Without missing a beat, in just the tone she knows her little girl needs, she says, “Me too, sweetie. Me too. Now all of you come sit down and eat.”

Thus, the question that Taika soon ponders tonight is one of technicality: is it really still casserole if the casserole is beefless? There’s a careful lack of meat in tonight’s home cooking.

Not that Taika’s dissatisfied with such a state of meal, looking down at her plate from her seat at the table.

Because yes, here, Taika actually gets a seat at the table. Hadewych's mother sits at the head, and no one sits at the foot—not in this household, no ma'am. Hadewych and Rikhard both sit together on one side, and on the other side—well, there are more rules in this house. If you’re eating, you’re eating at the table. None of this dish-on-the-floor nonsense like on television. Everybody’s family here.

So Taika gets the other side of the table to herself, sitting across from not Rikhard. There’s more than one moment of self consciousness when she has to dip her entire face down to her plate to take each bite, but there’s a grace in her bend, at least—she eats face first, yes, but like a lady. Slow, proper chewing. Her feet are all tensed right at either edge of her chair, straining not to sprawl off a size of seat not made for quadrupeds, but even her feet are tensed _ladylike_.

This isn’t difficult, and she won’t admit defeat here either. Not to this.

The rest of the table gets their fill considerably easier between tonight’s chitchat and whatnot. It’s all talk of family friends, funny stories from acquaintances, all the housework still needs doing—and somewhere still in the middle of all that, presumably, Hadewych’s mother says, “What colors are you thinking for the bedroom so far?”

“I want to wallpaper it,” Hadewych says, twirling her fork through the long noodles on her plate. “Not like a pattern or anything—I want a kind of a streaky red print, just so it looks like it's a bunch of different reds all mixed together that are a little lighter or darker in different places.”

“Well, why don't you just use real paint to make it look like that? I'm sure you could hire somebody.”

“Can you get paint to mix differently in different places like that? I don't know if paint works like that, Mama.”

Rikhard says nothing to contribute to this line of conversation. Because he's a man, and decorating is a woman's thing? He wouldn't say it like that, and he may not believe it like that, but surely he has no preference for silly things like how the house will look when it's all finished. All he'll need is a good recliner, a cold beer, and a brand new refrigerator to keep the rest of his twelve-pack in, of course.

Except that his favorite color is blue, and when he grew up, he was going have a big blue bedroom. Blue on the walls, blue in the chairs, and blue on the outside of the house, too, everywhere. And he would have plants in every corner—not just flowers or ferns, but _botanicals_ , the proper and fancy and impressive name. All that, yes, but most importantly a whole wall in the living room dedicated to family photos, father and all, after everybody would inevitably come back together and get them taken, every person wearing the same amazing smile frozen in the middle of saying cheese.

But right now, all Taika sees is Rikhard lifting his fork and filling his mouth without offering any differing opinion. Maybe he has a new favorite color now. Maybe he doesn't have a favorite color anymore. He hasn't mentioned anything like that to Taika in more than thirteen years now, not that she keeps count.

Not that Taika joins in the conversation, either. She leans forward, down, and takes another ladylike bite. Except she doesn’t quite pull her bite up as cleanly this time, and as a sliver spills out the corner of her mouth, she rears up her jaw and snaps the food back in her mouth through an automatic open-mouthed chomp.

And then she chews. While the humans at the table pretend not to be paying attention mostly to her. Not talking.

In that silence, Taika swallows. And mostly toward her host, only when her cheeks are empty again, lips shut tight, she mutters, _“My apologies.”_

Hadewych’s mother just smiles again big and kindly. “You don’t have to say sorry for enjoying my cooking, dear. You’re doing fine.”

Taika’s doing fine. Agreed. So she takes her next bite much quieter.

Keeping up the small talk, Hadewych’s mother says next, just as naturally, “But Rikhard, really, that truck of yours—when is _that_ getting a new coat of paint? Or a replacement?”

Rikhard doesn't seem to hear her for a moment or so, attention set only near Taika’s direction, but more distant than where she sits. His fork is in hand, but going nowhere. Lost in his own brain in a fashion purely understandable, if not understood why.

It makes Taika want to hear why, but… she's not like that. Really she isn't. Rikhard snaps back to attention smiling again the next moment anyway, and all is well just as quick.

“Sorry, the truck's non-negotiable. That's my third girl out there,” Rikhard says, tone funny and friendly. “She’s my baby. Part of the family. I can't just abandon her after all she got me through.”

He looks across the table. He shrugs an elbow and a grin right at Taika now.

“Got us through. We have just as many memories as miles on that girl.”

In Hadewych’s case, something sours that friendlier look she just had.

But rather than discomfort or some deep blush at what double entendre she might infer from phrasing like that, Taika instead restrains just a smirk. His “girls,” “girls,” “girls”—even before he got with Hadewych, she’s never had cause to question if he actually likes women.

Hadewych's mother chuckles little and dainty. “Well, after a service record like that, don't you think she's earned her retirement by now, dear?”

Taika next restrains a frown.

Because she's not that insecure.

Rikhard shakes his head and takes his next bite, speaking while he chews in one cheek, “Until me or she dies, she's with us for the long haul. New coat of paint, though—maybe I can do that soon. After we finish the house.”

Right now, how the conversation has turned pushes even Taika’s preference for reading between the lines. And she really doesn’t need any help doing that.

Hadewych swallows her mouthful with a roll of her eyes. But before she joins back in, she reaches her hand beside her, away from her plate, joining it around Rikhard’s. She gives him a look like something old, knowing, and relented. Looking in his eyes, and he, looking back in hers with a smile fresh—all of that in just a moment or two before Hadewych looks back to her mother and says, “He’s seriously never getting rid of that truck, Mama. That’s the one thing you gotta give up on now.”

Her mother lifts both her hands in the air and gestures them flat on either side of a pleasant grin, surrendering the point. Like offering an allowance for the conversation to change direction again.

Wherever it changes to, Taika only dips back to her plate. Within a peace they can all agree on, at least, the rest of the table talks. Taika’s just here for the food.

 

 

During the rest of the night, in night's truest form, it's a real bed that Taika gets again. Lying on her back, under the covers, furry knees and long toes prodded only minorly upward. It remains a graceful look on her, mostly. It's all part of a position in which by its very nature Taika can be only awake: staring at the ceiling.

She’s so awake.

It’s not quite right to say she has her own room for the time being—this is Hadewych’s. Hadewych’s childhood room, anyway. It’s all for Taika for now, yes, but only since Hadewych’s instead partaking of the guest bedroom. With Rikhard.

From when Taika’s gotten the tour before, she’s seen that the guest bedroom is decorated somewhat more… grownup. Hadewych’s bedroom, on the contrary, is better storied.

Or it’s a giant time capsule still not dug up.

The space is done in by a girl's sense of decorum still stuck, perhaps forever, in her transitionary period between purple, sparkly, and proudly girlish, and monotone, modern, and _mature_ . As mature as a self-conscious seventeen-year-old could reach for. Sentimental plush dolls, binders, and rolled-up boy band posters Taika can only imagine Hadewych couldn't bear to throw away just yet lie between _real_ literature on the shelves (strangely dusty, even for this room), and _thoughtful_ art framed on the walls, and a _tasteful_ peacoat still slung over the chair by Hadewych's little desk. Stickers cover the face of the laptop still sitting in the middle of the desk, and they are all painfully old to see.

Part of all that was a white lie, however. Just one detail.

The band posters are all metalhead.

Not even the younger Hadewych could be so neatly slotted into a single category of person, unfortunately. Protagonist may be simple, but antagonist, nay—not in a single one of Taika's separate little stories. Taika got the short end of lived experiences.

At least Taika’s got a proper bed again.

It’s strange to think she’ll be sleeping alone from now on, even after her own childhood home is fixed up. Rikhard says she’ll have her own room there, too—said with a look on his face like he was excited for her. Enough space all in one home for her to have her own dedicated place. It really should be exciting.

She’s slept in the same room as Rikhard for twenty-whatever years. She’s had the times she would have given _anything_ to get away from that maddenly smothering little boy, that infuriatingly moody teenager.

Now she’ll get it, but only from that smiling, distant man.

Not embarrassing, not even tiresome, but how mundanely annoying to still feel like such a teenager for herself over him. As if she’s the one still stuck in that purple and sparkly stage.

She should be more than used to this already. This may not be healthy anymore.

But maybe there will be nights where this will be nice. Privacy is the friend of a woman at any age.

And in an actual room like this, she can’t even hear whatever Rikhard and Hadewych are up to tonight. The walls aren’t so thin. They’re sleeping, though, surely. Everybody worked hard today. They’re all tired. Rest is what they’ve all needed.

Not that everybody gets their energy back the same way.

Taika rolls over onto her side, where she can sleep soundly. Or could. She worked hard today, too—but once again, sleep isn’t coming so easily to her. Like most nights, these days.

She’s bored.

A wisp of her fur slips loose and tickles over her nose, but her paw itches the opposite direction from her face.

She’s not that bored.

So she’ll just have to get used to it still.

 

 

So the next day comes, and it’s back at the house. Not inside, but out in the yard. It’s a cool day, but sunny, barely cloudy, some shade provided instead by the edge of the woods by the lawn, a breeze playing between their thick old trunks. And today's the kind of day that weather as pleasant as this matters the most.

In the middle of the lawn, weeds somewhat clipped and grass at least visible, here sits Taika, all better again—chin up, eyes closed, lips set straight. Rikhard stands before her, spine bent and angled down toward her, eyes set upon her.

Taika hears the bare shifting of his sleeve over his skin, and he lifts his hand up toward her, just grazing by her cheek. A slow breath catches over Taika’s nose, and she feels him lean close to her. She holds his sole attention. And she trusts him.

Then cool metal slips above her forehead, and a _snip_ cuts through their mutual quiet.

Her haircut goes well, as always. Her grooming. She’s come to expect such from Rikhard’s hands. He steps to her side next, circling around her while he looks for where exactly else needs his scissors. This is a routine, and it’s become quick over many years of practice.

Not present in this moment, specifically, are both Hadewych and Rikhard’s truck—together. Running errands. Gone.

Taika resists the urge to wrinkle her nose as more stray hairs flit down over her eyelids in constant little bits, but it’s no struggle. There’s a peace in this. There’s no evil gaze she feels boring into the back of her head, for now, and she and Hadewych haven’t fought at all in quite some time, anyway.

Taika still hasn’t quite yet gotten used to this today either, but she could. Everybody finishing clearing out and fixing up the house together, and then she and Rikhard can get back to regular training. Short traveling. Competitions. Then, too, Rikhard and Hadewych can get into the groove of… marriage? Whatever next logical step they find. Maybe they stay unmarried. Children?

If Taika weren’t there to feel it spread across her lips herself, even she wouldn’t believe the tiny smile making its way over herself at the thought of precious little babies crawling around who she could help take care of.

Having them for herself sounds like a pain, quite so. But she’d make a wonderful babysitter.

In that small bliss, she mutters the thought aloud, _“You’d be a wonderful father.”_

Searching still with his scissors, Rikhard chuckles, “My kids would get some great haircuts, yeah.”

Taika purses her lips in a gesture meant only for herself.

_“You can at least tell me how you really feel, Rikhard. Don’t be so mild.”_

The blades pull away from Taika’s scalp. All she hears immediately is Rikhard’s silence, or the sound of his fingernails brushing through his own hair, or a single step of his boot as he shifts his weight. Lips open, nails scratch again, and no words come.

The empty noise of a struggle to respond.

But when he’s ready, he says, “I don’t know if kids are for me, Taika.” He mutters, “You know that….”

 _“I don’t know if I do,”_ Taika says, proffering no such dramatics in her tone. _“What I know is that you’d do a much better job at fathering than yours did.”_

As he steps around her to within her line of sight, Taika catches the smirk on Rikhard’s face just before he says, “A better job, or any job?”

Taika says nothing to that. Whatever his tone with that means to him, it doesn’t sound like the right one to her.

“Seriously, I doubt I’ll ever want kids anyway,” Rikhard says. “That’s a load on my plate I just don’t know about.”

No? Interesting.

It’s a short moment more before Rikhard moves his scissors again. He steps back around to Taika’s side, silent and satisfied within such, and keeps snipping away.

Fair enough. Something like that. Taika sighs long and slow, lets that beginning of a frown slip away with it. All this is a peace she may not have wanted, but one she and Rikhard both need.

Then the breeze blows cooler across the lawn, and all the rest of Taika’s smile slips away with that.

But she’ll get used to this just the same.

It’s a little while longer of that before Rikhard combs her clean, snips one or two more spots on second inspection, combs her again, inspects—and their break ends. Taika stands up and shakes off, Rikhard puts away his tools in the little bag dedicated to them, and in a minute more, they set back for the house. It’s not like they were taking the whole afternoon off. And today holds new possibilities for what horrors they clean.

 **HALLWAY.**  
**THREE PATHS ARE NOW OPEN.**  
(bedroom, master bedroom, bathroom)  
(bonus path: linen closet)

Two bodies survey the way forward. This time, Taika stands by Rikhard’s side. The hallway is a disaster zone in much a similar but different way than the rest of what they’ve all worked through so far—the same stained, bulky kind of mess as in the living room gapes across either wall here, but there’s a winding way over the musty green carpet opened purely by time and necessity to reach the bedrooms.

There’s not really any options of where to work next, actually. The hall is dire. But the thought of being conveniently able to visit the whole rest of the floor is nice for a fleeting moment. Comforting, then exhausting.

This time, there's no moment of silence. Just a quiet sigh, and Taika says, _“Shall I begin in the bedrooms while you get started through here?”_

Rikhard stretches one shoulder, then the other, then shrugs.

“Go for it,” he says. He mutters, “Got a lot left to do, I guess.”

It’s all he has in him to say. But gloves on, sleeves rolled up, his face is already set in a pitying acceptance of the current circumstances as he pulls a folded garbage bag out from the crook of his elbow, flaps it open, and glances only for what nearest broken things will fit within it. He sets to work.

So Taika doesn’t interrupt him, and she tiptoes around their little shattered realm toward the first door on the left. The smaller bedroom. Hers and Rikhard’s, back in the day.

Just past the threshold, gaze static, she pauses. Doesn’t look around. Just takes it in.

Here, too, is a dumping ground.

Taika hangs her head an inch lower and shakes it. She’s not surprised. Just disappointed.

What kind of room might have looked liked Hadewych’s here, trapped in between times, is thusly long gone. The bed is covered in more clothes, more drapes, shoes, more empty plastic bags that most of the other clutter came in through the mail. The closet, whatever utmost secrets a little boy might have hidden within it, is totally blocked off as if with warning tape by a desk chair stacked to overflow with bright yellow rain jackets, the sort made out of a bulky plastic, more of them than even a complete family would ever need.

Trodding up to them, Taika brushes a paw over the topmost jacket, and it slides slowly, at first, then tumbles off the stack in a heap.

These are donatable. Never worn, not visibly moldy. Not that she’d recommend Rikhard or Hadewych use them.

She looks to examine the rest of the room, but no other corner fared the ravages of hoarding any better. The bed, too, what warmer memories she used to hold of curling up on it beside another, is buried. Every square foot is her work zone.

Her lips curl into a look of not particularly looking forward to this.

So she just so happens to next notice, instead, the mirror hung just next to the closet, a miraculous half of it still unobscured. And with soft footsteps made carefully, with just a quick glance back at the door to make sure nobody notices, she gets to take a proper look-see at the fine job done across her coat this time.

What pose she strikes comes with the smallest of self-indulgent grins, her hind and her back facing the glass, her chin lifted high in a look over her shoulder before she shifts the other way, thrusting her furry blue crest toward the mirror, crossing one paw before the other, fluttering crystal eyelashes, voguing in place.

One more glance back toward the empty door, more intense, full of seriousness this time—and Taika makes the time for just one more pose, smiling thin but proud, full of herself and earning it.

Then she—no, did he really?—yes, she spies a spot Rikhard missed.

It’s barely a few strands in one little patch on her shoulder blade that are longer than those around them, but Taika leans in closer just to make sure. And sure enough, after more than a decade of doting on her coat, not even Rikhard has perfected his art of the scissors.

Taika smiles in some smaller way she nearly doesn’t notice.

It used to be the kitchen that she got her fur trimmed in, that is.

Rikhard was getting so tall. Taika was still so short. Still just a Vulpix. Sat on a dining chair dragged over in front of the dishwasher so that her discarded clippings could be swept up later over linoleum rather than carpet, and Rikhard standing there before her in his thick woolen socks, so tall. His mother wouldn't do the job, so fate called upon him for it.

So Taika sat perfectly still. Trusting him, even then. Sharp twin blades in the hands of a boy with fingers still sometimes clumsy enough to let his glass of water slip and shatter all over the floor—scissors tipped barely through soft white tufts, the metal cold less than an inch away, grazing over her chilled skin. A quiet snip, and slowly, she's lighter. And she knows not what he does to her.

But she trusts him.

That was the worst day of both their young lives.

Taika twists to the right again and gives herself another look in the mirror before her back in present day, eyeing the rest of the fine current work done of her. She can only smile now, but when Rikhard raised the hand mirror to her back then, holding back his own tears, she found personally what mange must look like on a living, breathing person.

Forgiveness was difficult at that age. But they persevered. Tried again. He got better, but not before he got her a shiny new clip to tuck away at least some of the mess he made.

That was the one day she nearly got over him.

Taika lifts her gaze, looks over again at the foreign clutter taken over her real life. At the memories hidden under linen and rubble.

There really will be other children calling this room their own someday.

Sleeping in that bed. Hiding their own mess in the closet. Avoiding homework, watching television instead.

Taika can’t keep smiling.

How can she possibly be any part of that?

She can’t really babysit. She can’t be adjacent to the man she’s in love with and his wife while they live their best life together. She’s incapable of the mental gymnastics to figure herself into any happy space next to the happy couple.

Truly, without fantasizing, what part of that next stage of life—their life—does Taika fit into?

The moment has finally truly hit her. It’s taken long enough, but she finally realizes it. Just maybe.

She looks back to the bedroom door. On purpose, her mind wanders. It hears another.

 _ **ho**_ w **m** _uc_ **h yo** _u p_ **ay** _f **o** r **th**_ is ju _ **n** k **?** **t**_ **h** e h _e **ll y** o **u** d_o w **i** t _ **h** t **h**_ **i** s _,_ **m** _ **o** m, w **hat** e **v**_ en, w **h** _ **at** is t_h **i** s f **or** _? w **h**_ **er** e _y_ o ** _u_** e _ **v** en **f** in **d th**_ is, **w** _hy_

There's a clatter in the hall as Taika hears Rikhard suddenly stop what he's doing, then a stillness. In his real voice, she hears him call clearer, “Taika? Was that you?”

Taika holds that same stillness inside and out.

_“Rikhard?”_

Her whisper comes out just as the front door knocks open, echoing clear and creaky.

“Got the stuff,” Hadewych yells, the shivers of plastic bags in her grip rustling under her voice. “Mildew remover, like five bottles, more garbage bags... lots of 'em.... Baby, you in here?”

There’s a moment more of Rikhard waiting for Taika to continue, but she drops it. The direction of his voice drifts away from Taika to instead where Hadewych’s came from, and he calls to her, “We got started back here. You already got yourself some lunch, Haddy?”

Still from a close distance, Hadewych grunts some affirmative. And without conveniently forgetting the previous line, Rikhard calls lower back toward his other girl, “Taika, what’s up?”

Plastic bags shake closer. But Taika already knows what she needs to say.

She lowers her head and lifts a paw up past her face, nudging at her ear—pushing her little clip out from its tufts, letting it fall away, bouncing amongst all the rest of the spill here. She doesn’t see where it goes. Her mighty wisps cling closer against her ear suddenly, but she only shakes them further back.

_“Never mind. I just figured it out on my own. You can keep going.”_

 

 

Night’s quietest form.

Someone else’s home. Cold. Face to the ceiling. Alone. Sheets pushed half off her legs.

There is no part of their life Taika fits into. The last six hours have yielded no other answer.

Maybe it’s time she pursues her own life.

Maybe get over him? Make the time for it.

Taika’s eyes, wide open, are the illustration of existential crisis.

What open-ended terror she faces.

There's a window over her bed, curtains remaining shunted open, black shadows beyond the glass. From right where she lies, there's the moon in the corner of her eye, halfway through its cycle, right there, through the pine needles and treetops, merely a million miles away.

Every so often Taika's eyes shift toward its glow, and her brain flits around silly metaphors she now believes in completely.

Reaching beyond her reach. Can she make it? She must, though.

Where in the world could she go? But now it's a serious question. It needs an answer. Could she find some other partner for battle, a new coach? Could she find a… new line of work, as it were? Secretarial. Or translating. She can speak English, after all, in the only way that matters.

But could she really move on? Truly, though?

In these purely theoretical terms, could she really ever picture Rikhard as someone distant? Her closest friend, the only shoulder she had to cry on when failure or fear bore down, and the little boy emotionally vulnerable to her, too, before mother and schoolyard and society ripped that vulnerability away from him. Before they both learned how wrong it was for human and pokemon to be so touchy-feely between each other.

Taika’s legs shift against her blanket. She looks back to the ceiling, permanently indistinct.

She didn’t fall in love with such a dense man. She fell in love with a kind boy.

She misses the man that boy could have been.

And is it Rikhard who she can’t get over, or is it that man?

Her legs shift the same again. When she thinks about it like that—purely theoretically, not considering Rikhard anymore, just a mind’s-eye crystallization, degrees away… what could have her relationship been like with that man?

Her chest rises slowly as she breathes in. Awkward as the angle may be in this four-legged body, she pushes one leg down over her stomach and brushes it someplace low, between herself.

Wet already.

That perfectly human voice in the back of her head chides her for being so immature. Stupid. But she's a sexual being, too, just as much as Hadewych. Taika's psyche has the same needs.

What if she tried being more mature about all this after tonight?

She could try that. Tonight is a baby step, somehow, as one digit strokes farther the littlest inch it can go, and Taika's breath fails within the long gasp it elicits from her.

She doesn't need to think about all this so hard, anyway. Not tonight. Just for tonight.

She closes her eyes. Tonight, she’s not just bored.

There's no reservation left in the motion as her paw closes in across her mound. Taika clenches lips together before the noise in her lungs escapes her throat, and she rubs firm, long, gropes over herself like how she can imagine so easily her pretend lover would, equally desperate for her pleasure and her readiness for a long night, over and over. Blue fur shivers one limb against another, and guttural squeaks leak regardless.

Then her toe—his finger. She opens to her own touch, pressing firmer down, dipping inside herself. Just one digit. Just one so far, and Taika bites her lip now, squeezes her paw the deepest it reaches through shivering recesses.

Her fur is hot in a way she can't deal with but for kicking her blanket farther away, frowning for the moment her concentration is taken away from stroking her filthy self.

And in some other way, it's _finally_ that she's hot. It's a heat more unbearable than any cold and exactly what she's waited for. And yet her paw can't do anything more for her. Can't reach. Her leg is set at a dull ache within its stretch, and her stubby toe can't press as deep as her man needs to for her.

She needs more. A man's erection. Abnormally hard, in dire need of immediate inspection by whoever's closest.

There's a single moment of shame as it's Rikhard's immaculate naked form that enters her mind, but really, it’s not even Rikhard she’s picturing—just some effigy passably resembling him. And it's not an “erection” she pictures—it's his cock. Dripping, throbbing, in huge need of Taika's warmest reaches wrapped around it.

And there's absolutely no shame in the panting grin taking over Taika's lips as she imagines making this form of the man _wait_.

For the wait she's had to endure so much longer, she's first earned his tongue.

And picturing it that way, it just feels horribly, sickly _right_.

Taika opens her eyes quick, hazy, and dim. Pulls her paw back, shoves her knees over, rolls onto her side and then her stomach. She pushes to her feet. Lungs chide her heartbeat, but with lips open and breath falling hot off her tongue, she takes deep steps back over the mattress toward one of the rear bedposts—smooth, round, too large to fit anywhere, but just high enough over the rest of the bed to exploit.

She looks back only to position herself, dipping her face to a sweaty nuzzle just over the sheets, lifting her hind end high, legs spread far, and she closes her eyes again, and she squeezes swollen bud perfectly against unyielding wood. And every toe curls. And the sound out her throat isn't some maiden's tiny gasp, but a woman's growl.

Territorial.

 _Wanting_.

Taika pants through bared, clenched fangs, and surely burns herself on her own heat radiating out from her dribble leaking down the bedpost already. But not actually. Firm wood is more so nimble tongue, and all Taika can feel bursting in her nerves is a man built thicker than his truck knelt down on his knees behind her, licking her, swiping long, drenching the further depths he can reach inside her.

The whole bed rattles with Taika's every backward scrape and thrust, and it _should_.

And there’s no hesitation in the decision that she’s going to cum all over his face.

Deeper rutting, harder, and if Taika breaks this damn bed she's still going to collect her _un_ -rivaled orgasm from it. Knees shake and toes tremble and she feels in her bones that this is her _moment_ , and he's pressed _right_ inside her, and she buries her whole face in the sheets and shoves her mound _violently_ tight against its release and cries out, _squeals_ through cotton—legs twitching, dribble all of a sudden squirting, entire throat shivering, and Rikhard is thrust _deep_ inside her, pouring in—

 _Long_ overdue, Taika collects her release.

She breathes through stuffy cotton for the next minute as she comes down. She doesn't move. She doesn't lift her gaze anywhere.

But after that minute, when she does look back up, the rest of the world is still here. She looks back out the window, and the moon hasn't left her. It's still in view.

Here’s the moment back where she’s not fooling herself anymore.

Should she feel ashamed?

Somehow, she doesn't. Her face is just a canvas in waiting for any sort of next feeling.

Maybe she should feel ashamed of what she just did to Hadewych's old bed, at the least, but she doesn't even feel that. Not right now. She'll have to clean it up in some way in the morning, of course, but…

Taika should leave.

That home isn’t hers anymore. She should go.

She'll help get it ready for the family that can make use of it, and then she'll truly get out of their way.

She rolls back over, knees tucked up closer to her chest. Nothing but a strange, numb acceptance warms her now. Or chills her? It’s hard to tell. But she’s tired.

There's a mere last thought inside her before she may, for once, really be ready for sleep.

_I hope he'll miss me, too._

 

 

One boot lands over grass and gravel, then the other crunches beside it. Calloused hand holds the door open for her, and Taika squeezes herself and all her many tails out the truck, hopping down much softer in the driveway back home. Home-ish. Maybe not anymore.

Her mind is at a dull jog, groggy in the morning. But she’s still thinking.

Even as early as they all come out here every morning, Rikhard’s got a typically warm smile for Taika today, too, glancing down at her as he squeaks his door shut behind her.

He reads her face in an instant and chuckles, “Is that a good mood I see hiding in there this early? Really?”

Not that he read it correctly.

She hasn’t told him anything.

So with what effort it takes, she smirks all coy back up at him and says, _“We’ll see.”_

She’s still convincing herself that he won’t react too badly to her departure. That he’ll accept it and move on the same, for what maybe both of them need.

There will come a right time to tell him later. Just… not now.

The passenger’s door slams shut next, and Hadewych crunches lighter around her side of the truck decidedly grumpier at this time of day, both arms raised high in a stretch from her spine to her fingers. When arms drop and she sighs that breath back out, one hand comes back up toward Rikhard, palm open, fingers wiggling—she grunts.

It’s with the same smile as for anyone that Rikhard reaches his hand out to hers, too, and twines fingers together, and Hadewych clasps tight, and they walk together. And at a patter, Taika follows them in a day in which she can already see she is not the main character.

At least now she’s truly admitted it to herself.

“Bathroom’s fucked,” Hadewych grumbles barely louder than her bootsteps. “Didn’t even wanna get started on it yesterday… like a pipe busted in there or something, and now the floor’s all cruddy.”

Rikhard says nothing more than humming some affirmative, not quite a grunt.

“Your mom must really not have a given a shit about any of it,” Hadewych grumbles still.

Rikhard shrugs. “Her bedroom has its own bath, so she probably didn’t notice too often.”

“Well, she still managed to fill this one up with shit, so, sorry, but she wasn’t just ignoring it.”

“God, like… literal shit?”

“ _Christ_ no. If there were actual turds on the walls in there or whatever I’d burn this place down myself, what the fuck.”

Taika pays what attention to them it takes to register the words, but little more. She has just the focus enough for an appropriate pause in her pace behind Rikhard and Hadewych as they step up on the porch, and Rikhard fishes his key out from the pocket of his coat with his free hand. And he frowns.

“You think I should go see her?”

Hadewych cocks her brow with an instant scowl at him, her answer just as ready.

“Fuck no.”

Rikhard stays quiet, barely louder than the jingle of the key.

“I think I should go see her.”

As he rattles the knob unlocked, Hadewych’s hand drifts away from his. Both her hands go back in her own pockets.

“You have fun with that.”

Rikhard looks back to her as he pushes the door open, but the look between them is a conversation that’s happened before. Maybe one that will happen again, but not this time.

Right now, Rikhard turns back to Taika. And the expression that next shifts on his face is a crack in his armor she hasn’t seen in a long time.

“You want to come with?”

Truth be told, Taika really doesn’t want to either.

So she smiles again.

_“Of course.”_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware of some homophobic and abusive language in this chapter; it comes from an ugly person for an ugly reason, and it's not for edge or laughs.

A woman with the kindest smile Taika can imagine. Unbreakably so. A fortitude behind her poise unshaken by where her life's taken her these days, no matter the difficulties she endures here. The time she still makes for self care is evident in clear, warm skin, in long hair glossy and clean, in eyelashes particularly pampered.

“Hey…” Rikhard says upon approach, hands in his pockets. “How's my mom doing today?”

It's the nursing assistant before him and Taika, that is. Bouncy black dreadlocks tied up in a bun and mint-green scrubs slacked at her ankles, clipboard tucked over her wrist. Waiting near the closed door of Room 212 at not an old folks' home, and not an assisted living facility, but an “assisted living _home_.” Because people don't live in facilities.

No, they live here. Some people have to. Someday.

Taika stands a pace behind Rikhard, always at his heels, but the nursing assistant pays little notice to Rikhard's plus one as she looks up at him and brings her smile even warmer, saying, “You're Sirma's boy, Rikhard?”

Rikhard nods, a motion nearly overshadowed by adjusting his hands from his coat pockets to those of his sweatpants, fingers repeatedly clenching visibly through the fabric once he thinks them hidden.

Not that Taika notices _that_ much.

The assistant's smile remains, but her lips slim and her voice lowers as she says, “Oh, she's doing good today. She's just got herself in one of her moods again. Just grumpy. Kitchen's doing some barbecue and I'm gonna make sure she gets plenty of that for lunch, and then she'll feel better.”

Oh, the stories this woman must hide behind a look like that.

“I can still see her?” Rikhard says, not quite with any hopeful tinge to his tone.

“Of _course_ ,” the lady tells him. “Maybe that'll do some good for her, too. She may not admit it, but she could use her family.”

Rikhard nods slower, pulling his hands back up and crossing his arms so nonchalantly, biting his lip. He just says, “Right. Thanks.”

He turns for the door (to her room), and with nowhere else to go, Taika follows, the polite little smile on her own lips purely mustered.

“Rikhard,” the assistant says lastly, catching both their attentions again. The woman has a look on her face serious for this, and eye to eye she says, “You go see her for as long or short as you like in there.”

Rikhard grins at least a little. Nods. He and Taika go on.

As Rikhard and Taika enter together, stepping in, shutting the door behind them, stepping around the corner past the entrance—there's few similarities between him and the woman lying in the bed in the center of the room. Her greenish shade of iris is the same as Rikhard’s, mostly, and… as ever, not much else.

And yet at first obvious glance, Sirma is fully herself today.

Frown written into the wrinkles around her lips, eyes sunken, and still she hasn't lost any of the meat on her bones as she wastes away in deeper solitude than she could choose. Bedsheet pulled up over her waist, covered like some hospital inpatient waiting on her diagnosis but for the blank t-shirt draped over her bones rather than some gown. Paler than even Taika remembers.

As Rikhard and Taika both come into sight for her, it’s Rikhard her eyes fall upon first. And when this woman’s lips dredge open, there's a voice out of them surprising only in how much fresher it still is than the withered throat it crawls out of.

Sirma growls, “Shit.”

She narrows her old eyes and looks ready to spit, if only her cheeks had enough moisture in them for such. Instead, she says, “Didn't think my day could get fuckin' worse. Didn't tell me you were comin'.”

Hands tuck flatter against his thighs within his pockets, but Rikhard summons forth a smile above. One hand comes out in a simple wave like to a distant friend, and he says, “Hey, Momma.”

It somehow makes Sirma’s gaze even sharper, how dark it lurks under her deep brow. She blinks, only such, and then her eyes are upon Taika’s. And Taika freezes.

Sirma looks back toward Rikhard as she nods quick at Taika. “She's the one you brought? Really?”

Hand settles back in pocket, and Rikhard says, “Taika wanted to come see you too.”

Taika’s limbs don’t quickly relax. But she worms the same non-confrontational smile over her own face, and gently, she says, _“Hello, Sirma.”_

“In your goddamn truck?” Sirma says to only Rikhard. “Then she didn't _come_ , you _brought_ her, that's how it fuckin' works.”

There’s one little armchair for additional furniture in this room, pushed snug right beside the window. Provided by the staff, judging by its condition—high hopes they hold for visitors, maybe. It’s the chair that Rikhard’s attention swivels next to, rather than the last line of conversation. And with a hand back out his pocket, and a flat motion toward the open seat, he says with a look back over at Taika, “You wanna—?”

Sirma’s gaze bears down on either or both of them. Taika purses her smile and shakes her head.

So, clearing his throat, Rikhard settles himself down slow into the armchair, taking just the forward half of the seat. He perches his elbows over his knees and says low but cheery, “You been doing okay, Momma?”

Sirma’s gaze grows wider. Lips curl. In a rush, she lifts one arm and swings it out, fingers open, and she says, “You really fuckin’ askin’ me that? How does it fuckin’ look like I’m doing?”

Rikhard hangs his head a moment, twining his hands together. He says, “I just meant—”

“I know what you _meant_ ,” Sirma says for him. “Bullshit, that’s what. You get to get up and walk right out of here whenever you feel like leaving, and I don't. That's how I'm doing.”

The woman lowers her voice just as suddenly as it raised, but through an ever greater bite, she mutters, “I hate it here.”

She shakes her head, almost like a better mother, disappointed. Her small voice cracks.

“I hate what you've done to me.”

Rikhard opens his mouth to say something, or anything, but hangs his head lower. Taika watches, and there are words, phrases, retorts that she refrains from using that enter her mind regardless. There’s no greater will within her, either, to retort to this woman, and it’s not a conscious effort on her part as her tails all bundle tighter around herself, all the tips stilled and cold around her nape or feet.

Taika remains as quiet as usual, then. And through pursed lips, Rikhard musters saying after all, “You're not well. The court took a look at what you were going through and said—”

Sirma scoffs, “Court can kiss my ass. They all full of shit.”

She settles her arms back over her stomach, settles the sheet properly over herself again, and adjusts her lower back against her extra pillows.

“So what’re you even here for, anyway?”

Rikhard untwines his fingers and lifts his gaze back to meet hers, even his smile battered down into a polite grin.

“It’s been a while. Just wanted to see you, Momma. They treating you okay? Is there anything you want me to bring?”

Sirma pauses at his offer, genuinely soaking it in. She looks down to her bedsheets as if in harder thought somewhere else. Then she raises her head quicker, says, “They let you bring any beer in here?”

“Uh—I would, but this place has a, uh, policy against—”

“The _one_ fuckin' thing I ask for and you can't even bring that! What the fuck is the point of askin' me?”

Somehow, it’s a chuckle out from Rikhard at that. A weak laugh. He says, “It'd be warm beer, anyway, Momma. Fridge is off back home. We still got the electricity off.”

“And why the hell is that?”

The narrow look has returned to Sirma’s eyes. Taika sees it. Rikhard sees it.

This was a mistake.

Rikhard pulls one hand back around his neck, scratching, and he stutters, “Well, it's all part of the, uh… the process….”

Sirma’s gaze widens again. Rikhard bites his lip, looks away.

“Y’know, part of just getting the place… cleaned up a little.”

Dead in the eyes, staring him down even if he won’t meet her gaze again, Sirma says, “You throwing away my shit?”

“The house is in bad shape, Momma…” Rikhard says, hesitating. “Everything’s moldy. It’s dangerous—”

The rage in her voice, the slight bent in her finger pointed directly at him, is instant.

“Don't you throw away my shit!" Sirma screeches, leaning quickly forward. “Those are my things and you don't get to throw them away! I still might need some of that, you don't know! You don't get to do that, you little faggot!”

Willing herself not to, Taika flinches at the word anyway.

Rikhard just keeps his eyes cast down, silent and still, ready to take it.

And the wide, pointed finger remains seconds more while Sirma fumes, her lips taut and pale, her nostrils flared. She waits these seconds for the gaul of a response or some defense, gaze drifting between either visitor.

Until the gaze settles on Taika a longer moment, and the pointed finger redirects.

“She the one telling you to do it?” Sirma hisses. “Or is it your goddamn girlfriend? Who's telling you to do that?”

Rikhard just says quietly, “No one's telling me, Momma. I took one look inside and saw how bad it was. No one can live in there with all that.”

“Well _you_ are.”

“No, we're not,” Rikhard says. “We're staying at Haddy's place until it's liveable again. No one can live there yet.”

The finger falls. Then Sirma’s face with it. Just as soon as the next feeling sinks into her, a look of great personal drama overtakes her. Her voice drops to a whisper.

“You hate me. You hate your own mother.”

"Momma…” Rikhard says, lifting his chin, “that's not true, I don't hate you. Christ, I don't hate you….”

Lip nearly trembles, or so it shows, as Sirma mutters to him, “Then why are you throwing away all your momma's things, Rikhard? That's not the kind of thing a loving son does, baby. Why'd you put me in here?”

“I didn't—Momma, I wasn't the one who put you in here. I just think—”

" _No_ , no, you just let someone else do it for you and told them to _keep_ me here. I know. I heard it all. I know what the hell happened. You just want me to _stay_ in here forever is all. That's all you're thinking."

Sirma’s voice rises according to need, and when once again neither Rikhard nor Taika can respond to that, she straightens back up, fuming quieter through her eyes.

There’s never quite been much Taika can respond to.

It takes clasping his hands together, fiddling his thumbs one against the other, for Rikhard to mutter again, “I should have brought some flowers. I'm sorry, I can come back with some flowers.”

“Oh, you trying to skip out on me now, too? For flowers?" Sirma says, back to her look of readiness to spit so soon. “What the hell are flowers gonna do for me in here? Don't get me any fuckin’ flowers.”

She looks to the window, curtains open only slightly. Wistful, if ever she was capable of that look.

“You shouldn’t have even come here,” she says. “Can’t do anything for me. _Won’t_. Just leave me here to rot like you were going to anyway.”

Rikhard hangs his head back to its more usual state here, lips tight like he’s looking for missing words. His boots scuff against the floor, pulling closer to the base of the chair, maybe dealt with enough after all for today.

But somehow, Taika doesn’t push up from where she sits beside him.

Just as politely, she asks Sirma, _“Have you seen any of our tournaments on television?”_

A momentary look of confusion crosses Sirma’s face before she places the foreign voice returned to her head, and she glares back at Taika. She only says, “What about that shit?”

Taika doesn’t look away.

 _“We’ve won several,”_ she says. _“We fought hard for them. We really made it.”_

Sirma’s brow darkens even further.

“You didn’t make _shit_ ,” she hisses. “My boy did,” **_y_ o**u f _u_ _c_ **k** i _n_ ** _g_ _f_ _u_** r **r** _y_ _w_ ** _h_ ore**. i _k_ ** _n_ _o_ w _w_** hat _y_ ** _o_** u’r _e_ _a_ _f_ _t_ e ** _r_**.

Taika gives in. She turns away. Shuts her voice.

But without looking up, again never hearing what he never could, Rikhard mutters clearer anyway, ”Don’t talk to her like that.”

Boots flex, and he gets up. He pats one hand over Taika’s shoulder. It’s the gentlest touch he can offer, but there’s a greater strength within it than Taika could have thought either of them were capable of in this room.

And now another part of her heart aches.

“We’ll just go,” he says.

And just as Rikhard steps around Taika and heads for the door, Taika coming just as quick, then the voice behind them cracks, truly.

“You know I love you, baby, right? Momma still loves you,” Sirma whimpers. “Momma doesn’t hate you, Rikhard….”

His fingers are so close to the knob, but her voice pulls him back once more.

One weak smile, and still Rikhard looks back over his shoulder and says, “I know, Momma. I love you too.”

He pulls open the door, and as she follows him out, Taika takes only one look back at Sirma—and Sirma’s looking right back. The look on her face as Taika turns the corner is bilious.

Whatever she’s thinking now, Taika refuses to know.

 

 

Old, well-loved truck rattles down the road back through the woods, exiting town just now. Wheels lurch over potholes hidden past every twist and curve, but neither Rikhard nor Taika truly notice anymore when they get jolted over such on either far side of their worn vinyl bench, not so much padding left in it to cushion the bumpy ride.

Rather, they ride in silence. Windows up, heat on, vents open.

It’s getting even colder outside.

Taika takes another deep breath, and it’s now taken her about twenty minutes of them to figure out what little she still has to say. So finally she says within Rikhard’s mind, with full need of the breath in her lungs, _“I should have said something more.”_

Rikhard keeps one hand grazed over the top of the wheel, guiding it back and forth, and his other by the edge of his closed window. He says just as plainly as he ever does, “About what?”

Taika doesn’t look to him, either.

_“She had no right to say any of that. I should have defended you. Or myself.”_

Rikhard eases on the accelerator to swing a tighter left.

“It's all right,” he says. “She's not in a good place. Just venting, y'know?”

Taika does look to him.

_“I don't think that was just venting.”_

“Sure it was,” Rikhard says instantly, his expression as blank as his voice is confident. “Her brain's getting worse, right? She was sure better growing up.”

The sound of Taika’s voice tightens.

_“Marginally.”_

One glance back to her, one eyebrow raised within the look he gives, and Rikhard looks back to the twisty road just as quickly. He says, “You can hate her if you want, but she still needs someone looking out for her. That's my responsibility.”

Another curve in the road, and Taika barely notices the sway.

She says, _“Is it?"_

Rikhard brings his other hand to the wheel, clenching firmer at ten and two, straightening up. Frowning, letting just that slip.

“ _She_ at least kept me, so yeah, it is.”

His knuckles relax again only slowly.

“Kept us.”

He bites back the frown and now runs one hand through his hair, brushing back the strays over his forehead. He takes a quick breath, says faster, “And you know she kept us fed. That's a lot better than a lot of kids get out there in the world, y'know? She never kicked us out, never laid a hand on us. Never treated you like… just some animal, or something. She did the best she could.”

It may not be the first time he's defended his mother, but still it sounds as if it's his own honor he defends, the way he says it.

To that, the words forming in Taika’s head bite over her tongue even without use of it.

_“Without Hadewych and her mother to show there's better than that, Sirma would still have you. Have both of us.”_

Rikhard says nothing more for a moment, but his frown stays.

Then he says, “So?”

Lips closed, Taika takes a deeper breath just for herself. She purses her face into a tiny smile, and she says, _“I'm just glad you have Hadewych now.”_

Rikhard says nothing, but his dour expression wanes.

 _“I feel as though you take her for granted sometimes,”_ Taika says, _“but you two have really needed each other all this time.”_

Fingers shift over the wheel, and Rikhard keeps his eyes on the road. Something else reaches the corner of his lips.

“More like... if you weren't there, I woulda fuckin' lost it,” he mutters.

It takes a moment in silence longer for Taika to realize the heat reaching up to her ears, an uncomfortable warmth all too suddenly visible beneath the slighter fuzz there.

She peeks back at Rikhard, and he already sees the blush. He’s grinning again already. But he looks back to the road just as casually, and he mutters further, “Everybody needs somebody.”

Adjusting his grip on the wheel, he mutters, “And she needs me.”

And with a look right back at Taika, with a smile slimmer, he mutters, “Even if it's not the other way around anymore.”

She can hear his certainty, but it’s only a muffled anxiety she sees.

He knows where his life’s headed. He has a path forward. Taika looks back ahead, too, but only to the dashboard.

It’s getting harder and harder to tell him.

“By the way,” Rikhard says, “what happened to that old hair clip?”

 _“I think I need to go,”_ Taika whispers.

Rikhard looks quickly back over to her, nearly alarmed. Back to the road again, and he says, “Do you want me to, uh, pull over, or can you wait until we get back?”

A momentary grin settles over Taika, but not enough of one for the giggle that doesn’t make it out.

Usually it’s not a bother, but her tails are tucked so tight around her in here right now. The heater isn’t helping. She swallows something back.

 _“I mean that I think this should be a home for just you and Hadewych,”_ she says.

Taika barely peeks back over to him, and there’s only an increasing look of confusion making its way down Rikhard’s features.

“So… where are you planning on living?” he says. He laughs a moment. “You think Haddy’s mom needs some company? I think she’ll be good with us just nearby. You don’t gotta be that out of the way for us, Taika, don’t worry about it.”

God. This was supposed to be just the one big thing she had to blurt out all of a sudden.

Slower, Taika says, _“I think you and Hadewych should build a new life together. Just you two.”_

Quieter, _“And I can do that, too. Just me.”_

And silence carries through. Just the truck rattles along, engine thrumming or heater blowing or tires crunching.

Anything to distract from the color draining even paler from Rikhard’s face, eyes wide, lips thin.

He doesn’t look back to Taika as he says, “Are you serious?”

Taika doesn’t find a response to even that. So like he’s trying to keep it together, Rikhard says, “Why?”

She looks anywhere but at him. She doesn’t need to see what feelings finally break through his shell here.

Taika just says, _“I want to see the world, I suppose. In a different way.”_

“We’re already seeing the world, we’re—we’ll be back on the road after the house, we’ve still got _plenty_ to see out there.”

_“In a different way, Rikhard….”_

“Just—that’s not why. Did I do something? _Please_ don’t let me ruin this because of how stupid I am, please. I’ll fix it.”

 _“Don’t berate yourself,”_ Taika says.

Rikhard’s next deep breath comes quick, but the panic in his lungs stays there. He shuts up.

In that kind of quiet, Taika says, _“Sometimes it’s reasons you just… can’t say.”_

Trees give way to a greater clearing, the road widens, and now wheels crunch over old gravel back up toward the house.

“Taika, come on,” Rikhard whispers, knuckles tightening over the wheel this last distance. “You’re my best friend….”

Maybe it’s both the words and the tone of his voice, but Taika frowns. She’s been called many things, some of them true, but “homewrecker”—that _won’t_ be one of them.

 _“That’s Hadewych,”_ she says. _“She needs to be.”_

The truck pulls to a stop just before the house, and Rikhard pulls the gear into park. And his hand lingers over the lever. The engine groans more than hums, but even that rusty old noise is far too quiet for Taika to bear.

It takes a long moment before Taika can look back toward Rikhard.

He stares back at her with shoulders given out, as if on his knees from an inch above her.

Barely a croak out from his throat, he says, “Please don’t leave me.”

It takes a longer moment before Taika can look away.

 _“We’ve got more to clean first anyway,”_ she says.

He just needs time. So did she.

Deep breath, and she tilts her face away from the flow of the heater, still going.

She says, _“Could you come get my door for me?”_

 

 

It takes just a few more days before it can accurately be said: it’s winter now. No snow yet, and maybe they won’t even get any. Some winters just don’t.

It’s still cold out, though. Cold in, too.

Again, it’s Taika on the farthest side of the huddle as she, Hadewych, and Rikhard have lunch on the floor of the living room. It’s warm, homemade sandwiches Hadewych’s mother arranged and toasted for them all that they chew on silently, Taika’s own meal again stretched out before her through Hadewych’s boundless selflessness of holding it up.

The living room’s empty now.

Not completely, but with only the television, a stained recliner, and two folding chairs that are leaned up against the wall remaining, it feels as if there’s really nothing left. The folding chairs were brought a week or two ago, and yet neither Rikhard nor Hadewych have actually used them thus far, even to escape the seat of this filthy carpet.

Taika takes her next bite softly, but still it comes with a crunch through the bread. No one cares.

Hadewych and Rikhard both have their coats still on, unremoved through the whole day so far, not even during heavier lifting. Hadewych has her long hair done up in a jumbled bun with the loose, fluffy strands tucked over her ears, trailing down her nape, and its effortlessness is matched only by what she usually prefers calling her own resting bitch face.

Rikhard—he still just looks crumpled.

Taika wills herself not to check on him too often, but just a glance here and there, and his expression hasn’t changed in the last several days. Emotionless. Not slumped, but drooped; he hasn’t let his posture be so poor in years. He’s barely halfway through his sandwich, not matching even Hadewych’s pace. He hasn’t taken a bite in a minute.

Not that Taika pays that close attention anymore.

He just needs more time.

Though as the idea of moving on settles in closer, that’s something even Taika might like to indulge in.

Not that she needs it.

Something knocks high against her leg—an elbow. Not a shove, but a move made distinctly on purpose.

Taika looks over, and while Hadewych’s jaw remains set forward, her gaze is pointed slim and sideward back at Taika. Glaring, just without anger backing it up.

They both sit there a moment further in complete silence. Taika cocks her brow, and Hadewych rolls her eyes, knocks her elbow carefully against Taika’s leg again. Taika gets what she’s getting across, but it takes a tight-lipped breath before she truly listens closer to Hadewych:

 _i_ ** _ng_ _c_ l**u _e_ **_y_** _ **e** t_ w ** _h_** _a_ _t_ _t_ he _h_ _e **l**_ _l_ el _s_ _e_ _c_ _ **o**_ **u** _l_ _d_ _t_ _h_ i ** _s_** m **e** _a_ ** _n_** y _o_ _u_ _f_ **uck _in_ g** _—t_ _h_ **e** re _y_ _o_ u _a_ _re_ _,_ _c_ h **ri _s_** _t t_ _h **i**_ _s_ _i_ _s_ fu **c** _k_ _i_ n _g_ _w **e**_ ir _d li_ _k_ e you _’re w_ **i** _g_ gli _ **n** g a **r**_ _o_ un _d i **n** m_y _b_ _ **ra**_ _i_ n _th_ _i_ ** _s_** s **u _c_ _k_ _s_**

Taika nearly frowns, but not quite. And Hadewych’s expression keeps dauntlessly the same through her whole thought process, only looking back away as she feels Taika enter.

 _“Am I intruding, Hadewych?”_ Taika says.

 _ne_ ve ** _r_** m _i_ _ **n** d, y_ ** _e_ a**h _ **n** o _**ST _A_ Y** _t_ ha _t_ _’ **s**_ _t_ h **e _w_** _h_ o _ **l**_ ** _e_ _p_ _o_ i _n_** t _j **u**_ s _t_ _d_ on ** _’t l_** _e_ _t_ ** _ri_** kh ** _a_** r _d_ _h **e**_ ar y _ou_ _—_ ** _f_ _u_ c _k_** i **t** _’s_ _h_ _a_ r _d_ _t_ ** _o_ **_sa_ y _e_ v _e **ry**_ _t_ hin _g_ ** _r_** _i_ g _h_ _t_ wh ** _e_** _n_ _yo_ _u **c**_ **a** n _’t_ t _h_ _i **n**_ _k_ _a_ ** _b_ o**ut _it_ _f **i**_ _r_ st _i_ h **a** t _e t_ a _l_ _k_ **i** n _g _ **l**_ **i** k_ _e_ ** _t_** h _i_ _s_

Not that Taika can feel that much, but she sees plainer the embarrassment creeping up over Hadewych’s frown.

 _“Take your time,”_ Taika says simpler. _“What did you want to talk about?”_

Hadewych’s thoughts jumble into a different order in an instant, unrestrainable, and immediately Taika hears, _p_ a _t_ _ro_ ni _z **i** n_ ** _g_ b _I_** _T_ ** _Ch_** ne _v_ _ **e** r __m_ i _n_ d ** _s_** _ **o** r_ry _o_ _r_ wh **a** _ **t** e_ _v **e**_ _r_ _,_ _i_ w _o **u**_ **l** d _n’_ _t_ _s_ _a **y**_ _t_ ** _h_** **a** _t_ o _u_ _t_ **_l_ _o_ u**d d _a_ _m_ **m** it _,_ _w_ ha ** _t_** _ **e** v_e ** _r_** _li_ ** _s_** _t_ en _w_ ** _h_** a _t_ d _i_ _d_ _r_ _i_ ** _k_** h _a_ _ **r** d_ _’s_ m ** _o_** _m_ s _a_ _y_ _t_ _h_ is _t **i**_ m _e_ _?_ **h** _e_ ju ** _s_** _t_ _t_ ** _o_ l**d _m_ e ** _s_** _h_ e w _a_ _s_ _i_ **n** _a_ b _a_ **d** _m_ o _o_ _d or_ g _r_ _u_ **m** _p_ _y_ _a_ n _d_ th _a_ _t_ _’s_ _ **a** l_ _l_ _t_ he _f_ **u** _c_ _k_ h _e_ _’d_ ** _s_ _a_** y

Taika does frown. But not like that. She looks away a moment.

 _th_ at **_b_** _i_ _t_ ch _c_ an _’t_ _**g** e_t h _i_ _m_ **l** i _k_ _e_ _th_ is _f_ _ **o** r_ _t_ _h_ i _s_ lo ** _n_** _g a_ ** _nd_** _i_ n _e_ ** _e_** _d y_ _o_ u **t** _o_ _te_ l _l_ **_m_** _e_ w _h_ _a_ _t_ _s_ h _e_ _s_ **aid** _b_ ec _a_ ** _u_** _se_ r _i_ _k **h**_ _a_ r _d_ w _on_ _’t_ _a_ n _d_ _i_ _**ne**_ e _d_ _t_ _o_ **_k_** n ** _o_** _w, d_ _ **i**_ d _s_ h **e** _s_ _a_ y _s_ ** _h_** _e_ _w_ a **s** _g_ on ** _n_** _a_ _hu_ r _t_ ** _he_** _r_ se _lf_ _?_

Before Taika can consider how best to put it, one more thought of Hadewych’s pushes to the forefront.

 _d_ i _d_ ** _Y_** _O_ ** _U_** _fu_ c _k **i**_ ** _n_** _g_ _sa_ y _s_ o ** _m_** _ **e** t **hi**_ **n** g _?_ _wa_ sn _’t r_ _ea_ l **l** y _t_ _hi_ nk _i_ **n** _g_ _th_ **a** t **n** e _ve_ r _m_ in _d_ _f_ u _ck_

Mysteriously, Taika hasn’t found a good previous moment to inform Hadewych of her plans. Even if now it may be good news.

Taika clenches her lip. Now just doesn’t feel like that moment either.

_“She was as foul as usual. I wish neither of us had gone—”_

_s_ h _o_ ** _uld_** _a_ _g_ on ** _e_** _m_ ** _y_ s** _e **l**_ ** _f_** _i_ k ** _n_** _ **o** w_ _t_ _h_ a _t_ b _ut_ i _f_ u _c_ _ki_ n _g_ _ **h** a_ _te_ h _e_ _r i_ _f **u**_ **c** k _in_ _h **a**_ _ **t**_ e _h_ e _r_ ** _s_** _o_ _ **m** uc_h

_“I told Rikhard I would leave after we’re done here.”_

Ah. Oops.

Well, maybe that’s just how it needed to come out again.

Hadewych’s eyes only widen as her thoughts come to a sudden focus.

_are you fucking kidding me_

_that’s_ **_w_** _hat he’s_ _t **h**_ _ **i** n_ _ki_ n _g a **b**_ **o _u_** _t_

 _he still_ _ha_ s _n’t—g_ et **ou _t_** _**GE** T_ _**O**_ U _ **T**_ _i_ _n_ e ** _ed_** _a_ m _i_ _ **n** u_t _e_ wi **t** _ **h** out yo_u _L_ ** _IS_ T**E ** _N_** _ **i** n_ _g_ _g **e** t _**_ou_** _t_ **OUT** l _et_ m ** _e_** _t_ _h_ in _k_ _t_ hi _s_ _th_ r **o** _ **u** g_ _h a_ ** _LO_ N _E_**

Taika exits gracefully, looking away just the same. True silence again, at least for her.

Beside her, Hadewych takes a deep, fragile sigh. And beside Hadewych, Rikhard says nothing all the more.

Usually he’d hear that and ask Hadewych if she had something on her mind, if he could help.

Too much still on his.

Another small knock on Taika’s leg. She looks back over, and the dauntlessness over Hadewych's face is now less so.

 ** _rry_** _s_ ** _o_ r** _ **r** y_ **s** _or_ ** _r_ _y_** _fi_ _r_ s _t_ _t_ h _in_ _g i’_ m _t_ _ **h** i_nk _i_ _ng i_ s _**s** o_r _ry_ _, i_ k _n_ _o **w** y_o _u_ _he_ _ **a** r_d _t_ h **a** _t_ o _ne_ _, w_ _h_ y w **o** _ul_ _d_ ** _YO_** U _e_ _ **v**_ e _r_ _a_ ct **u** _a **l**_ _ **l** y **w**_ _a_ n _t_ _to_ _le_ a _v_ _e_ **h _i_ _m_** _d_ id _h_ **i** s _mo_ m _f_ uc _ **k** i_ _ng t_ ** _h_ r**ea _te_ _ **n** y_o _u_ _ **o** r _**_s_ o _m_** _et_ _hi_ n _g_ **_F_ _U_** **C** K _i_ _h_ a _te_ _t_ a **l** k _in_ _g l_ _i_ k **e** _th_ _is_ ca ** _n_** _’t h_ _el_ p _it_

Taika says—

She says…

Something cleverly deflectful, in a better world. Hadewych peeks over and scowls the slightest second instead.

 _d_ **on** _’t_ _b_ o _t **h**_ _e_ r _n_ ev ** _e_** _r_ _m_ i _n_ _d_ **d _o_** _ **n** ’t_ _a_ n ** _s_** _ **we** r __t_ **h** _ **at** , __y_ _o_ u _**d** o_ _n_ ’t _n_ _e_ e _d_ t _o s_ _ **a** y_ _**i** t __i_ d _o **n**_ _’t ne_ **e** d _to_ **h _e_ _a_** _r i_ t _ne_ ve _r_ _m **i**_ n _d_ _to_ _e_ ve _r **y**_ _thi_ n _g_

So, back to the usual state of affairs.

Taika thinks of pulling away again, leaving it at that, but her own unbidden thought breaks through next, maybe not thought through as well as it should be before it crosses the divide:

_“At least like this, we’ll never have to be truly candid with each other.”_

But there’s no mad scramble within Hadewych’s mind in response. Taika’s words quiet all of Hadewych’s.

Distinctly then, unclouded by trains of thought beside, Hadewych thinks, _hell no._

 _“Unless you’re the one who’d like to give that a try,”_ Taika says with a tiny smirk.

 ** _HELL_** no **_he_ ll **_n **o**_ _i_ j _u_ _st_ ** _t_ _o_** **l** d _you_ _h_ el _l n **o**_ _fuc_ _k_ _i_ h _at **e**_ _yo_ _u,_ di _d **n** ’t **m**_ e _a_ _n_ _t_ o _th_ in _k t_ h _a_ _t_ _w_ **h** at _e **v**_ _e_ _r i_ _k_ n _o_ _w e_ _n_ ou ** _g_** _h w_ _i_ t _h_ ou _t y_ _ou_ _ha_ **v** in _g to_ **s _a_** _y_ _i_ _t_

The murky headspace returns. On cue, more like. But Hadewych truly can’t help that.

Taika says, _“I think I’d still rather not admit it, anyway.”_

Her gaze falls.

_“I do miss when you and I got along better. Back when you and Rikhard got home from school and we all went to your—”_

_o_ h _m_ _y_ **_fuc_** _k **i**_ **n _g_** _go_ d _p_ _l_ e _ase_ _**l** e_t’ _s_ _n_ o _t w_ _it_ h _t_ _ **h**_ e _r_ em _i_ _ni_ s _ci_ _ **n** g n_ ** _ei_** _t_ h _e_ _r o_ f _ **u** s __ne_ e _d_ _t_ h _at a_ n _d_ _i_ _d_ o **n** _’t wa_ nt _to_ a _nd_ _i_ **_ha_** _t_ e y ** _o_ _u_** o _h_ _go_ _dda_ m _m_ _i_ _t_

Taika willingly stops, despite the interruption. She raises her paw instead, this time nudging Hadewych’s arm. The drooped arm, with the sandwich.

_“Be a dear, and such?”_

With another roll of her eyes, Hadewych lifts the meal back to Taika’s level, and Taika takes a firm bite.

 _“Well, that’s why I think my departure will do us all some good,”_ she says, chewing quietly. _“Rikhard too, after he’s gotten used to it. He and I both need to learn to rely on other people.”_

A tiny scoff out Hadewych’s lips.

 _b_ u _l_ _ls_ hi _t a_ _n_ d **_yo_** _u k_ n _ow it_ f **u** _c_ _k_ _i_ _d_ _i_ d _n’t_ _me **a**_ _n_ t _o_ _t_ h **i** _ **n** k_ t _ha_ t _e **i** t_h _e_ _r_ co _ul **d**_ _y_ o _u_ j _u_ ** _s_ _t_** _—_ _i_ _ne_ e _d_ _m **y** **b** r_ai _n_ _b_ a _c **k t** o __ju_ _s_ t _m_ e **_a_** g _a_ _i_ _n_ _c_ _o_ u _l_ d _y_ o _u **j**_ u _s_ _t_ g _o,_ h ** _a_ _r_** _d_ _n_ o _t_ t _o_ _b **e**_ _r **u**_ de _ **c** o_ul _d yo_ u _j_ us **t** _l_ _e_ t m _e a_ ct _u_ _ **a** l_ _l_ y _t_ h _i_ n _k_ _a_ _ **g** a_in _wi_ ** _t_** ho _u_ _t p_ u ** _sh_** _i_ _n_ _g_ h _a_ _lf_ **m** _y_ _sh_ i **t** ** _a_ w** _a **y** _a _t_ _ **a** l_ _l_ _ti_ _me_ s

Then she bites down back on her own sandwich, crunching louder.

Taika withdraws, and this time there is no coming knock on her leg.

Hadewych slumps her head over the crook of Rikhard’s shoulder, snuggling into it, frowning still. The fabric of their coats shuffle against each other. It takes a minute longer before Rikhard seems to realize, or at least care enough to lean his own head over hers.

The picturesque cuddle.

Taika only glances at such. Takes her next bite, somehow still within reach.

Like it or not, now everyone knows. There’s nothing stopping her from leaving.

She doesn’t need more time.


	4. Chapter 4

Still, it’s quiet outside.

It’s snowing.

The house is so empty now.

It’s so cold.

Most of the leaves are fallen and gone. And the pine needles are barely visible on the trees at the edge of the forest, blanketed in dead weight since at least dawn. The snow started sometime in the night.

Time is up.

Taika sits out on the lawn out front, all the grass dead and buried beneath wet, crushed snow. Her toes are numb. So is everything else.

Hadewych stands tall but hunched in the back of Rikhard’s pickup, leaning down and taking the filled bags he hands up to her, shoving them tight against all the rest already loaded up. It’s the last load for today, before it gets too cold in the night. Even colder than now. Frightening.

There’s no need for either of them to talk for that. Taika? She has nothing better to contribute.

She’ll leave in another week. She’s told them.

If there were some power within her to simply fade away harmlessly from place and memory, she’d make use of it, but no, she just has… ice powers, and such.

The closest of her abilities is merely to stay quiet and out of the way until she’s gone.

She can keep offering that much.

Hadewych squeezes the last bag tighter against the rest with the flat of her boot, and she braces one hand down over the edge of the cargo bed while she hops out back into the snow. Rikhard shuts the tailgate after her. They’re loaded up.

Taika stands again, shakes snow off herself, and she climbs into the truck after Hadewych slides in the middle, right next to Rikhard. Taika sits squished in the seat against the window, holding her tails close, but she still doesn’t buckle. Doesn’t work like that for her.

Key twists into the ignition, engine rumbles, headlights click on down the road, and they’re off to the dump.

The roads get paved promptly around here, and there aren’t that many to pave, but Rikhard drives slower than Taika wishes anyway.

By the time they get there, it’s pitch black out and five minutes before this facility’s gate is locked for the night. There’s no moon. Just the dull glow of the taillights as Rikhard slides out, jogs around to the back, and tosses every bag as efficiently as he’s grown used to in the past months.

Taika barely has time to shiver at the evening air slipping inside as he already slides back in and buckles back up, already time to get back “home.”

But at this point, finally, the engine’s rumbled warm enough for the heater to come on. Taika breathes easily again as Rikhard cranks it. He next lowers his hand to the gear, ready to go, get back, get some sleep—until another hand clasps over his, holds it still.

Hadewych’s. She stares him dead in the eyes. Taika can’t see the look on her face, but her voice is at first tiny.

“It’s her or me.”

Taika stiffens. That easy breath hitches now.

Rikhard stares back at Hadewych blankly. He glances around at Taika. Looks back to Hadewych.

“What?”

“ _Pick_ ,” Hadewych says, volume rising. “Taika or me. This isn’t some goddamn joke.”

Taika keeps motionless even as Hadewych refuses to look back to her. But even looking back in whatever her eyes show, Rikhard doesn’t muster anything. And not even he states the obvious.

He just says, “Haddy, why?”

“There’s one _rational_ choice here, Rikhard,” Hadewych says. “It doesn’t get easier than this. So just choose. Her or me.”

Wretched heat rises from Taika’s cheeks to her ears, and every breath she takes now prickles her nostrils no matter how slow they come.

She wishes more so now to summon a rift in space to swallow her whole.

It’s the longest moment yet from Rikhard. He looks down at the wheel, braces a wrist behind his head, thinks long and quiet.

For this entire longest moment, he says nothing.

Even after the moment’s over, he says nothing.

The muscles in Hadewych’s fingers tighten, and she jerks her hand off from Rikhard’s. She folds her arms and faces straight forward and down, glowering into empty space, lips pursed tight. Her jaw trembles, but the bite on her tongue stays there.

Taika turns toward the window and clenches her eyes shut.

For all she ever wanted to hear from him, too… this was never it.

Instead, Rikhard pulls into reverse, gets the truck turned around, into drive, and it’s a dark ride back.

Still no one talks the whole way.

Country forest roads give way again to a familiar driveway, and Rikhard soon pulls into park beside the little car usually there. He cuts the engine, clicks his door open, slides himself out, and Hadewych bustles out past him without waiting, storming toward the glow of the porch light, fogged breath rolling behind her. She slams the door behind her when she disappears inside.

Rikhard just stands there in the snow watching her, hand still on the door, breathing slow in the night air.

Taika watches him.

Quietly even from her mind to his, she says, _“You really blew it, Rikhard.”_

Rikhard’s expression still doesn’t change. His cheeks are dull in the cold, but he only sinks his head over his arm, hiding his face from the flakes still falling.

“Yeah….”

For the few thoughts lately that Taika crosses amongst Rikhard’s, she always darts herself in and out too quickly to hear what he’s really thinking. She doesn’t dare read his mind. But one more thought opens in hers:

_“Tell me why.”_

Though that one doesn’t make it across the distance.

She doesn’t send it.

Rikhard just stands there, bulky arm hiding his skin, hair scuffed under his sleeve, and Taika doesn’t want to hear a thing going on inside him.

She’s not going to be the one to remind him to please get the door for her again, and she’s not going to scoot over out his side.

She can wait.

 

 

Here’s a more familiar scene: Taika, alone in all her glory, but right now sitting on the floor against the bed in Hadewych’s old room. The lamp’s still on, and the ceiling is too bright for how long she stares up at it.

It’s about bedtime, but she’s just not ready for that struggle just now.

She doesn’t have anything left to think hard about anymore. Her thoughts are a blank canvas, only slightly marred.

Just the vague feeling of her resolve, gone.

Shouldn’t it have at least taken actual words to make her crumble, too?

It’s less familiar lately when there comes a knock from the door. And just after, Rikhard’s voice.

“Can I come in?”

Taika frowns. She lowers her gaze and closes her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. She gathers some facade of a smile.

_“You may.”_

The door creaks open slow and steady, and there’s Rikhard poking his head in from the other side, still only peeking before he enters. He closes the door behind himself quietly, and he steps closer to Taika uneasily, fighting a grin out of himself.

Without saying anything more before him, Taika shuffles some inches to the side. In a quicker, awkward motion, Rikhard clears his throat and settles himself on the floor beside her.

But not too close.

Taika waits for him. Rikhard stares at the floor, propping one knee up and laying one flat—and eventually, voice remaining quiet, he finds the words.

“I didn’t ever want to trap you here with me,” he says.

Taika just watches him. Her lips tighten.

“I still don’t want you to leave… but I’m not gonna be the guy who keeps you from what you really want to do,” Rikhard says, nodding slowly to his own cadence. “You gotta do what you want. For real. And… no matter where you go, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t ever come back to visit, or… something like that.”

He breathes in deep, tilts his gaze, and hesitates a moment—then sets a hand over Taika’s paw, clutches it tight. He breathes out again. Looks her in the eye.

“You deserve to be happy. And I know you haven’t been, not around me. Not for a long time.”

Taika’s brow furrows even against her own restraint, but she looks away before he can see.

“I don’t want you to feel like you _have_ to stay, or like you’re unwelcome here,” Rikhard says. “I really hope you live the life you’re after out there. I want you to be happy.”

Taika clenches her eyes shut. Her thoughts are getting ahead of themselves.

She says, _“I just—”_

She sends it freely, but still she cuts the thought off in the middle. She can’t finish that one.

She’s warming all too easily under his touch.

She looks back at him again.

_“You need to go tell Hadewych how much she means to you right now, Rikhard. It matters. And it won’t change the relationship between us.”_

Rikhard keeps his hand tight over her paw, grinning. He says, “I think she needs a break from me tonight anyway. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

 _“You’re taking her for granted again,”_ Taika says.

Just his eyes change expression as Rikhard hangs his head, sighing.

“I guess that’s how I’ve been taking both of you.”

He musters the grin fuller.

“I got selfish. Trying to keep you both all for myself.”

His hand drifts away from Taika, and he pushes himself to his feet, grunting. Taika watches the conscious effort as he straightens himself, that second longer before he remembers to pull his shoulders back.

Rikhard sighs again. “Really don’t think Haddy wants to talk tonight, though. She’s… not feeling it. My fault, obviously.”

Walking back to the door, he only cracks it open as he turns once more. All with that grin, he opens his mouth—and pauses.

He shuts up. His gaze falls as he says instead, “G’night.”

He steps back out, creaks the door shut again.

Taika sits alone again, and the lamp seems to glare more now than before in all the newly empty space.

All of a sudden it’s too bright for this late.

Taika sighs, too, but she doesn’t get up yet even to turn it off. She just mutters back only to her own quiet brain, _“Goodnight, Rikhard.”_

And that just makes her feel silly.

 

 

Dawn lazes back up over the treetops now, shiny and frozen, but the driveway’s been shoveled early enough that the sun has no blinding reflection here. It stopped snowing last night.

Taika and Rikhard both wait in the truck for Hadewych, still inside. The engine’s still warming up, but the heater is on, and this old vinyl Taika clenches her toes over is just above freezing by now. She can bear it.

All morning, no one’s said a word. Everyone was silent at breakfast. Rikhard helped cook it, but not even Hadewych’s mother asked what happened.

Mother’s intuition? Maybe some mothers really do have that.

Taika hears the front door slam, and she shakes loose from other thoughts. There’s Hadewych on the porch, stuffing her ungloved hands in the pockets of her jacket as her first breath outside fogs instantly, and she buries her jaw deeper in her scarf. She watches the ground for stray patches of ice as she crunches over to the truck.

Rikhard gets out and holds the door open on his side for, but she barely lifts her face as she stops before him rather than climbing inside. Taika can see, too, that the look on Hadewych’s face is the same as earlier this morning: gone.

Without really looking at either of them, Hadewych says, “I’m gonna take a break today. Just not feeling up to it.”

Before Rikhard can say something, Hadewych then does look closer. First a glance to Taika, and then eye to eye with Rikhard, she says just as empty, “We’re over. Forever.”

Rikhard blinks. Still he doesn’t say anything. Certainly, Taika doesn’t.

Hadewych watches him a second more, gives him the chance, and when the moment is gone, she looks away again and mutters, “This sucks.”

She crunches back to the house. Without looking back, she opens the door, enters—wipes her sleeve quickly over her eyes—and shuts it.

Neither Rikhard nor Taika really react. Stunned, if nothing more. Or numbed already.

Rikhard looks back to Taika, and both of them know only that neither of them know what to think immediately.

So he climbs back in by himself, and his hand hesitates over the gear, but they get going.

It doesn’t seem that time’s passed before they’re parking back at their old house, chained tires crunching the snow there flatter. And Rikhard doesn’t really linger. He scoots out, gets the other door for Taika, and it’s without stopping to think that they both tromp on over to the house.

But there at the threshold, looking on, Rikhard pauses.

Breath catching in the open, looking up, he just stops.

Utter exhaustion on his face, in his shoulders. He’s drained. And there’s hardly a greater energy in Taika.

She doesn’t really know what she’s doing this for anymore, either.

Without any sure step, Rikhard trudges close to the porch and turns around, collapsing onto half-swept concrete, arms falling over his knees in a weak sit.

Taika sits gentler next to him, getting out of the snow. Her jaw hangs open that same inch as his, tired, breath rolling out into the open air, too cold to think deeper.

Except that there really used to be a time she didn’t do drama.

Really not as introspective as she thinks, sometimes.

 _“I’m the one who messed up after all,”_ she says.

Rikhard glances slowly at her. She really did cross that thought over, apparently.

 _“I thought if I left, neither of us would have to envy the other anymore,”_ she says.

The cold keeps him silent a moment longer than necessary, but Rikhard says, “For what?”

Taika says, _“You.”_

Rikhard faces forward again, squinted eyes glazing over past the truck. He says, “Oh.”

He leans farther forward over his knees, pulling his hand back up over his hair, scratching, smoothing it—something.

“I thought I was doing everything right,” he says. “Not doing everything perfect, but… thought I was doing everything I was supposed to.”

Taika says, _“No one can do that forever.”_

Rikhard looks back at her, and maybe it’s the temperature, but the look in his eyes has softened.

“I never really did that for you, huh?” he says. “Like—just saying something’s… not okay, and that’s okay. Just being a shoulder when you need one.”

His gaze falls wherever else, and he mutters, “Starting to feel like you two put up with a lot more than I meant to put down.”

Taika watches his gaze wherever it goes, and then she hums.

 _“It might not be kind to mention,”_ she says, _“but good looks do go some way to making that easier.”_

Again Rikhard looks to her, and without even thinking about it, Taika grins. Rikhard does, too.

Though Taika’s fades as soon as she feels the blush replacing it.

“Thirteen, fourteen years ago… did we ever get over that old middle school crush on each other?” Rikhard says.

His grin falters, but he keeps his eyes on her.

Taika stares back at him.

“Did we both… have that?”

Taika breaks their gaze first.

_“We both had that.”_

“Did we get over it?”

Even Taika’s breath catches in the air as she breathes in, breathes out.

_“I didn’t.”_

Without waiting for his response, she hangs her head and smirks. She says, _“It’s not very impressive to hang on to feelings like that for so long, is it?”_

It’s far too cold to think deeply about what she’s saying.

“Less impressive to let other people tell you how you’re allowed to feel for your best friend just because she’s a pokemon,” Rikhard mutters.

He slides his hand down to the back of his neck, fingers clenching.

“I don’t think we were ever in love,” he says. “Haddy and me.”

Taika says, _“You said you were.”_

Rikhard says, “I think I’m a liar.”

Taika looks back to him, and he pulls his hand back around to under his chin, slumping his head in his palm.

“I used her,” he says. “I just wanted to be with somebody. To feel like what I was supposed to feel like. I’m a dick.”

Not even any of Taika’s pithy thoughts occur to that.

“Is it good or bad that right after she dumped me, I’m already hoping she finds somebody better?”

_“I don’t think it’s fair for me to answer that.”_

“I guess it’s not,” Rikhard says.

He shifts his knees and turns his gaze once more, looks her in the eye. Neither of them look away.

Just like this, Taika says, _“Should we get back to cleaning?”_

Just as plainly, with his cheek squished against the palm he’s rested it against, Rikhard says, “Nah.”

He says, “I fuckin’ hate this place.”

Without any grin suitable for it, Taika says, _“What else are we going to do with ourselves?”_

Too cold, but she still probably shouldn’t have phrased it like that.

Rikhard smiles bigger back at her, but there’s a different look with it. He gives her a look.

She’s not sure what the look means.

 

 

Again, Taika hops down from her side of the truck, and Rikhard slams the door shut after her. They’re back in snow, only slim lanes in the road plowed this high up—but the view from up here is beautiful.

The whole town sprawls out beneath them down the forest, perfectly on display for them from the dedicated viewing area at the top of the mountain. There are no other cars, no other people up here with them this time of year. It’s all theirs.

Rikhard cradles a coffee for himself in one hand and one for Taika in the other, hers unlidded. He sits himself up on the hood of his truck while Taika walks closer to the guard rail, soaking in a greater look over the rolling hills of pines and long, low clouds. Her skin prickles under her fur, but it doesn’t feel as much colder as it should at this elevation.

There’s a new hair clip tucked over her wisps now, bundling stray hairs from slipping over her face. No bejeweled bits hiding behind her ear this time, just a simple sky blue, not too small for her anymore.

“You remember Simo, back in the day?” Rikhard says, sipping loud from behind.

Without looking back just yet, Taika says, _“Vaguely. You played with him at school forever ago, you told me.”_

With just a sigh, she says, _“He gave you your first black eye.”_

“That kid, yeah,” Rikhard says. “What an ass. Now _that_ guy was a dick.”

 _“What do you think he’s gotten up to since?”_ Taika says.

Another sip, and Rikhard says, “I wanna say he got to selling used cars down at Laukkanen’s or something, but I heard he moved. Never seen him since junior year. Made my life easier.”

 _“I used to think your motivation for exercising so much was to fight back against all those boys, actually,”_ Taika says. _“But then you never did.”_

“Yeah,” Rikhard says. “At first I just wanted people to look at me and think, ‘Oh, look at that, he’s not such a weird little guy.’ Especially after Haddy… y’know, she was the only person willing to talk to me at school. And I really needed more friends.”

Taika frowns. Much as she might dislike admitting it, even she needed those. For as long as such lasted.

Rikhard’s coat shifts audibly taut over his arm as he lifts his cup again, sipping longer.

“Yeah,” he says, “fucked that up pretty bad.”

Taika peers longer across town, gaze drifting over the long, low bricks of Rikhard’s old school, the western half shrouded in shorter pines than the rest. Then she turns back to the truck, saunters over, hops her front legs up, and jumps gracefully onto the hood before settling down beside Rikhard.

The heat of the engine hasn’t permeated the hood at all. She snuggles one leg only close enough against Rikhard’s arm for warmth, not that his coat allows her much.

 _“How well do you remember our first_ Tourneig pel Mar _?”_ she says. _“Or however they pronounce it. They have such a long name for the whole thing.”_

“I remember we got booked in that little red motel the first time,” Rikhard says, holding Taika’s coffee out for her. “Then turquoise the next. Every apartment down every street, a different color. What a joint.”

Even in the middle of two careful laps into the cup, Taika says, _“Not the cliffs, or the palms, or that beach?”_

Rikhard sips again, too, before answering.

“I liked it inside better. I kinda like it colder than they had it down there,” he says. “Sweating at the gym’s a whole lot different from sweating from the heat.”

Taika smirks.

Related: the single bed in their room is the high point she remembers.

She pushes closer against his natural heat anyway and says, _“You’re absurd.”_

Rikhard sets his coffee down on the other side of the hood, then sets one warmed hand over Taika’s shoulder. His voice goes to just a wispy low as he says, “I remember how stupid hard you fought. Our first big tourney, and how mean you got for it out on the field.”

He purses his lips a moment, then whispers, “How stupid fuckin’ _proud_ I was to be the other half of your team.”

 _“The adrenaline really does wonders in the middle of it all,”_ Taika says. _“Especially for when that Garchomp sunk into my leg.”_

Rikhard recoils in grand, grinning fashion, leaning way back over the hood before coming back, groaning, “Jeez… I felt so bad after, but like—I felt bad, but seeing you do that little limp you did was just… you just made it so dainty, it was so cute. And then I felt like shit thinking that about a real injury.”

 _“Rude!”_ Taika scoffs, bumping a tail softly against his coat. _“Make it up to me now. I’m freezing.”_

Hesitation. Fingers tense a moment over her fur. But then Rikhard’s hand drifts farther around Taika, reaching around and pulling her cheek closer over his own shoulder.

He’s still not that warm, but she feels his skin brushed under all the wisps atop her brow, and she doesn’t complain anymore.

 _“I truly do want to see more of the world, outside of the tournaments,”_ she says, _“but I never wanted to do it alone.”_

It’s difficult to lower her own voice so much within her head, from hers to his, but her next thought, Taika truly whispers.

_“Did you ever get over it?”_

Rikhard’s hand tenses again over her fur, then loosens consciously. He sighs inward, but his gaze lingers over their town.

He says, “I told myself I did.”

Taika looks away from him, and he clears his throat, stifling something else. But he says, “I’m not ashamed anymore. Never should have been ashamed in the first place, but… I’m not anymore. Momma never really knew best for me, anyway, even if she tried. Even if she didn’t.”

Rikhard sighs.

“It’s Haddy who helped me work through that shit, too, even if she didn’t mean to.”

Even while Taika’s upper face burns the hottest of her body, she sighs louder, _“I suppose today is a poor time for us to finally be bringing all this to light.”_

“Yeah, with Haddy… I led her on, I guess,” Rikhard says. “I don’t know if I can make that up to her. Years spent on me, just… wasted.”

Just as idly as she’s managed all thus far, Taika says, _“It wouldn’t be right to take this any further right now, then.”_

And just warm enough now to regret that, quickly enough that she hasn’t yet thought it through first, she says, _“Not that, um… that was meant to mean anything in particular.”_

But Rikhard doesn’t offer much of a response to that. He sits and thinks a moment longer, then rustles a hand into his pocket and tugs his phone out instead. He mumbles, “Better do the first apology now, see if there’s still any space there for us to sleep tonight.”

He taps out a message, and it’s barely a minute before his phone buzzes with another. Taika thinks to glance down at the screen after Rikhard, but as he reads it he bellows a single shocked laugh, and he hides the screen all too fast against his leg.

Though she cocks her brow, Taika says only, _“Not so easily forgiven, surely.”_

Shaking his head with eyes still wide, Rikhard says, “Not that. She’s just feeling _really_ blunt about it right now.”

_“Well, let me read it.”_

“Oh, no way. I’m embarrassed enough for two.”

Lifting his phone again, but angling the screen away from Taika, Rikhard mumbles as he taps out his next message, “All… we’re… doing… is talking.”

On instinct, at least, Taika rolls her eyes. Now, still, her blush hasn’t had a chance to fade.

Rikhard’s phone buzzes again in barely a second more, and as he skims the new message, he looks back up to Taika and says, “Looks like her place is just a maybe. Probably shouldn’t head back too early, though, give her some time away from me. Away from us, I guess.”

Taika nods. Then, despite how early it still is, unbidden, she yawns.

And seeing that, as if in solidarity, Rikhard stretches his back wide and full with a close groan.

“May not be back on the road again yet, but… you feel like a nap?” he says. “Short one. We can keep the heater on.”

Well… they do have an unfortunate length of time left to kill.

Taika smiles.

 _“We’re taking it easy today, after all,”_ she says.

They both slide or hop off the hood, and Taika climbs back inside ahead of Rikhard after he gets the door.

When Rikhard stretches out like usual, slouched against the corner between his door and backrest and legs kicked one over the other off the bench, when he shuts his eyes with a deep sigh—it takes Taika a moment not to simply curl up and lay her head back over his lap, like in golden days past.

Time and place. Not now.

She curls up, but dips her cheek the other way, over the other seat. Her ears tip low, and she closes her eyes too. She’s already gotten tired for not having started work cleaning today, her body unused to the lack of activity, but all of a sudden, heavy eyelids don’t make it any easier to get to sleep.

And despite the better help of the clip newly nestled over her tufts, still, some lone white wisp falls gently again over her face—before the heater’s flow vibrates it just barely away.

She can rest her eyes a while, at least.

 

 

Even now, or later, whichever it is—even after time to herself, across the table, Taika notices how Hadewych’s expression remains mostly the same as this morning. Not fierce. Not broken. Not even tired, but… closing in on such, except for how sharp she keeps her gaze. Her arms are folded. Her boots and jacket are long since off, but socks and sweater still on.

Her eyes are still a little puffy.

They’re all three at the dining table, but there’s no meal laid out. There’s no one else here, Hadewych’s mother off on errands remembered suddenly.

“Thought I’d get to blow up on you when it finally happened, at least,” Hadewych says. “Not like I wanted it to happen, but at least I’d get to scream and cry and I’d get a villain out of it or something….”

This time Rikhard is beside Taika, both on the other side of the table. He says, “I fucked up.”

“Yeah, well, we can still agree on that,” Hadewych mutters.

“It’s okay if you still wanna scream at me,” Rikhard says.

“Fuckin’—it’s the wrong mood now, I can’t just—no, I don’t want to scream anymore. I just—”

Hadewych purses her lips tight, looks away. Shakes her head.

“You just… you weren’t doing anything while I wasn’t there, before this, were you?”

 _“We didn’t, and he wouldn’t,”_ Taika says.

It takes a second for Hadewych to glare back at her, not so automatically. Taika looks away with something of a blush, partially guilty.

“Would it, uh… I still want to be friends, if we can be, but I know I don’t really get to decide that,” Rikhard says. “Maybe it’s the wrong time to say it.”

No immediate answer, but Hadewych lifts one hand to her hair, toying with her ponytail. She breathes in deep from her chest, but sighs back out quietly. She doesn’t look back at Rikhard or Taika.

She has no answer at all.

So Rikhard says quieter, “You’re better than I deserved, Haddy.”

“Oh, my _fucking_ god,” Hadewych says faster, dropping her ponytail. “Rule number one is you don’t say that shit _right_ after a breakup, either. ‘Sorry I didn’t really love you, I’m underqualified.’ What the _fuck_.”

With an anxious smile, Rikhard says, “I can keep saying dumb shit until you’re back in the mood to scream at me.”

Hadewych pulls one foot up on the chair with her, knee in front of her chin, and pushes deeper into the seat, gaze falling below her lap this time. She slumps.

“Fuck….”

Without lifting herself, she glances back up toward Taika.

“ _You_ say something,” Hadewych says. “Say something so I can at least hate you more or feel like shit for treating you like I did the whole time, or fucking _something_.”

And without defaulting to some polite, sorry little smile, Taika just shrugs.

_“We all deserve to be happy. None of us more than any other. I’m not going to antagonize or console you for that.”_

Hadewych scoffs. She glances between Taika and Rikhard both.

 _d_ i **d** _h_ e h ** _e_** _a_ _r_ ** _t_ h** _a_ t _?_

_“No.”_

_s_ **t** i _l_ ** _l_** _f_ u ** _c_ _k_** _i_ _n_ g _h_ at _e_ y ** _o_** _u_

Taika smirks, and Hadewych scowls. Rikhard just looks between them cockeyed.

“How often have you two been leaving me out like that?” he says.

“Hell, once was often enough,” Hadewych says.

Her scowl loosens its grip, but as she glances back at Taika, not entirely. She says, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s just, like… losing your man to a _pokemon_ —it really sucks.”

To that, even Taika crosses her brow.

_“I don’t think there’s a right way to take that, actually.”_

Hadewych rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah….”

The only defense of anyone’s honor Rikhard attempts this time is through clearing his throat, rather than jumping in. Rather, he says to Hadewych, “What are we going to do with the house? You have just as much of a right to it as either of us. We’ve all put the work in.”

Hadewych cocks her brow right back at him and her lips hang open an inch, the picture of ridiculous right before her. “Well, I don’t fucking want it now. Burn it for real for all I care.”

Another silence. No retorts.

Rikhard says, “You sure you don’t want to yell at me…?”

Taika doesn’t butt in, but it really is a dense man she fell in love with, too.

Though she wonders if a little yelling wouldn’t help.

Hadewych tilts her face further away from them both, gaze dimming. She says lower, “Could you two just… could you get, like, a motel or something after all? Just… I need space after all.”

Rikhard glances back at Taika, and she at him. Some small look shared between them, and Rikhard’s the first to rise from his seat as Taika joins him.

“Would it help if we brought back some beer later?” he says, pushing his chair back against the table.

“You hate beer,” Hadewych mutters.

“You don’t,” Rikhard says.

Setting her paws back on solid ground, toes flexing in silent welcome of it, Taika says, _“I’d be willing to give some a try with you.”_

“Could you just not? Not now? Just… seriously. You’re exhausting.”

Hadewych keeps her gaze ducked away, and… Taika offers back a little smile after all, at least. Rikhard leads their way out.

 

 

It’s getting dark out by the time Rikhard and Taika are out on the road once more, but there’s still some light left in the sky over the trees blurring by above them on either side of the road.

Rikhard’s hands are set on ten and two over the wheel, eyes set just past his headlights. Easier than his words came earlier, he says now, “Kind of like we’re traveling again, just the two of us. Or… you know what I mean.”

 _“I know what you mean,”_ Taika says. _“It is starting to feel like that already.”_

Rikhard’s lips keep to a smile even as there’s nothing else he comes up with to say. Taika peeks over at him from the other side of the bench, just as satisfied without speaking—

There’s his shoulders pressed back against his seat, sitting up straight. Relaxed. No conscious effort in holding himself tall and content.

She missed that look.

But she catches his eye, too, and he glances back over for the second he can take his eyes off the road—and for how warm his smile is, it fades a moment.

He looks back ahead and says clearly and suddenly, “I don’t remember where any motels are in town.”

Gently, he twists the steering wheel to the right and pulls to a stop just off the road, mumbling, “Wasn’t there one near that superstore that closed down…?”

Tugging his phone out from his coat, he taps it on and over to a map. He squints a moment, then says clearer again, “Right. Yeah. There’s one.”

And he shoves his phone back, and lifts his hands back over the wheel, sighing loud and quick as if the latest silence has gotten uncomfortable again.

As for Taika—that was a lie earlier. It wasn’t a peek.

She hasn’t really stopped staring at him.

And without pulling the gear back into drive, without going anywhere—he looks back at her.

Their whole lives, somehow, she’s never really gotten such a deep look into his eyes.

She doesn’t quite feel it happen. She hasn’t told herself to. But her body just… moves.

Lips open. Eyes close. Taika kisses him.

And she tastes his lips open to hers.

His hands over her cheeks, his thumbs grazing beneath her ears—and she tastes him kissing her back. Tastes the breath gasped off his tongue, caught within hers, and it takes no conscious thought for her to take more of these.

Her paw slides closer over the vinyl, and Taika breaks the gap between them.

All of a sudden—it doesn’t feel sudden.

Her tongue plies deeper, tangled within teeth and cheek, wetting more of herself the farther she goes, and there’s no doubt she can foster that tells her this is wrong.

This is _hers_.

Rikhard’s tongue laps below hers, and there’s merely a moment either of them break away, gasping together. He looks her in the eye, and it’s in wonder. Wide open and in wonder of her.

Taika presses back. No more kisses—just the one, still going, obnoxiously wet. She _will_ take more of it.

Breaths fall hotter the longer each second gets, gasped nasally, desperate—and between every greater breath they steal off each the other’s cheek, Rikhard whispers, “Taika….”

His hands are gentle, but Taika burns beneath them so quickly. Thumbs stroke her like a lover Rikhard doesn’t wish to let go of anymore, and Taika lifts a paw to his chest, toes not cautious anymore in wanting to touch him.

Mutual spit drools down Taika’s chin, sliding dark through the fibers, and when lips draw away just one more moment, Rikhard whispers, “ _Taika_ ….”

A high-pitched whine, purely animal, escapes her throat without her notice. But Taika’s claws press firmer. Her eyes open dim, sharp, and she sees all again within the dark. She gazes back into Rikhard’s eyes.

And she does not whisper.

 _“I’m already naked,”_ she says. _“Why aren’t you?”_

Rikhard looks at her with eyes soaking in every detail, but it takes him a second for more.

“You sure you wanna… you really want this?” he says. “We don’t need to go fast if you don’t want to. I don’t want you to feel like this is fake.”

Taika squirms farther toward him, toes squeaking hard over the bench as they shift direction.

 _“I haven’t been thinking about this for only a few minutes,”_ she says face to face. _“I want this, Rikhard… but if you don’t, then we’ll stop.”_

Rikhard smiles.

“I want a lot with you.”

He strokes her cheek.

“I definitely think this is part of it.”

Taika grins. The paw on his chest stays there. And she enunciates.

_“Then take your clothes off, Rikhard.”_

Another moment of gazing between them… and Rikhard snaps to. His hands pull away from her face and he grabs at his coat, yanking the sleeves down his arms, off his wrists, away. He throws it toward the dashboard, but it slides sleeves-first down into the footwell anyway.

Taika growls low and needy. Her claws extend and squeeze audibly tight over the edge of the vinyl just by Rikhard’s leg, and a thought crystallizes perfectly clear from her to him.

 _“Shirt now,”_ she says. _“If I have to help get it off, it won’t ever come back on.”_

Rikhard watches that expression, and a grin bubbles up within his as he whispers, “I’ve got spares.”

Taika lifts her chin, and her fangs gleam in fading light.

_“Take your shirt off, Rikhard.”_

Rikhard grabs at his hem, stretching it up and off himself.

Now they’re getting somewhere.

Taika edges closer still, and her all tails storm loose behind her, finally demanding their share of the cab. She lifts a paw to Rikhard’s bare chest, bare skin, and finds her gaze fully distracted with the display his pectorals have put on just by _being_ there.

But his fingers find the fuzzy crook of her chin, and his eyes bring hers back. She finds his lips once more and she falls back into them, gladly getting used to this.

“I don’t get to—see you this aggressive very often…” Rikhard mutters wet through the cracks. “Not out of training….”

Both paws lift up toward his chest, tucking her whole body against his, and Taika tilts her face for lapping him up deeper still.

But a kiss is no final goal.

One paw dips so soon to his sweatpants, claws catching gingerly over the waistband, and she truly paws at him.

As commanding as she means to say it, the sopping, smacking noises between their tongues only reduce the tone of voice in her head as Taika says, _“Lay down and help me—get these_ off _, Rikhard.”_

She hasn’t seen this youthful kind of eagerness in him for a long time as Rikhard shimmies lower down the bench, and she pads back, spreads all her legs for him to sprawl underneath her. Neither of them break their kiss as Taika bends down with him, and Rikhard finagles both hands around his drawstring, tugging it loose and stretching his pants down over his erection.

And not just his cock—his _erection_ , yes, fully erect. Taika feels that molten lust slap free and damp between her thighs, and her smile turns sickly slick around the drool spilling from her, too.

_“There we go….”_

Taika lifts from his mouth with a dainty pop of spit, and rather than another _downward_ adjustment, she turns around, each step careful over him, tails bunching all around them again on her hind end’s path to hovering over Rikhard’s face.

She looks back, and a fire’s in her eyes. She pushes her mound closer to his face and her lungs grow heavy. _“You already know how to do this?”_

Hands clench around her rump—but Rikhard doesn’t dive in. One hot breath over Taika’s barest skin and her knees tense, and Rikhard lifts his face to her mound slowly, grazes lips tender upon her. Then it’s her clitoris he first suckles over his tongue.

Taika shudders.

She bites her own lip for those growls turned _blissful_ threatening to escape her throat already.

Rather than the desperation of a man figuring out how to make her squirt, it’s the experience of one figuring out _just_ how she’ll best enjoy it.

Taika wriggles further back upon him, all her toes suddenly weak, and willingly, Rikhard lays flat underneath her. Taika’s hind paws spread carefully, gingerly beside his shoulders, fighting against the urge in her legs to collapse, until she’s sitting down properly. On him. Neck hunched slightly, but _sitting_ on him, and he’s switched to _licking_ her—she blushes madly, and it’s all she can still feel of her face.

This pounding in her chest never occurred within her fantasies. She’s cramped, and the heater’s blowing right against her face from here. There’s nowhere for her tails to go but for bunching up against the window and the corners of the cab, and her leftward paws both struggle again to stay perched on the bench without slipping off.

But she’s _sitting_ on him, and _this_ is the warmth she’s been always after.

And no struggle stops her from next drawing herself to focus on the erection still below her. Rock hard. She doesn’t have to care anymore about how hot her face burns. As she leans down, her cheeks twitch in minor little yips as Rikhard explores inside her. And it’s not a thought that crosses from her mind to his, but rather a more wordless idea that occurs to her as she lowers her face to his cock:

Is he big? Is this big?

Two twitches of her button nose as she sniffs, more little drips edging down the shaft from over the slit on his tip, and Taika licks. Then flinches, nearly yelps—Rikhard huffs within her walls, fingers curling over the great fluff of her rump.

Two inches from his several more, Taika smirks despite herself.

It doesn’t matter. He looks like _just_ her size.

There’s no rhythm she’s familiar with at this, so she just licks at first. Once more, then twice. He throbs against her tongue—Taika recoils another inch, staring a moment as he twitches again, all on his own.

It can just… move by itself like that?

 _Excellent_.

Her own exploratory licks grow more daring. Her long tongue laps completely around his tip, and she braces lips against it. A kiss, soft and fuzzy for the hair that grows fine around her muzzle. Fangs brush against his skin in this damp nuzzling, but even Taika thinks not to bring them too close.

But daring—should she truly dare? Pucker lips over teeth, suck him all down, take all the practice she could use right now? Figure out exactly how he’ll _explode_ in her mouth?

No.

Despite the heat burning all over her face, she grins. She pulls away. And she pries herself up from Rikhard’s mouth, leaving him panting, both of them on edge.

But she won’t keep either of them waiting long.

Just looking back to him, and her eyes shine through the glare—she can feel it.

 _“You’re going inside of me,”_ she says, panting. _“Now.”_

There’s not so much care this time as she turns back around, tails brushing all over the cab again, and her knees crouch on either side of his hips, and the next throb she feels from him is directly against where she needs it.

“Easy,” Rikhard warns, breath returning fast. “Careful, don’t go fast….”

Taika huffs regardless. Rather than going easy, now the difficulty she faces is lining him up in the growing dark without any _fingers_.

So his come to grip instead. He holds his cock steady, and now Taika’s breath comes to hitch. She perches perfectly atop him, and all her toes flex tight at their wettest contact so far—and there comes the white of his skin where she braces herself over his ribs, claws nearly prodding through skin.

Taika presses him inside.

She gasps a long, high whine out her lips. The bench squeaks beneath her motion.

 _Thicker_ inside her.

Here’s the warmth she never _knew_ she was after.

Rikhard gasps quieter, his breath turned quickly to a grunt. His hands slide over her paws now, clenching tight around them, holding her. He _throbs_ , and Taika wants more of _that_ —it takes all the rest of her focus just to slide down over the last inch, bottoming out around him.

Throbbing, connected. The air’s gotten thick with the smell of them both. Musky.

Taika gazes down at Rikhard with eyes softened, and in the mess of her own head, her voice has lost that forceful edge for a moment.

 _“I didn’t… want you to be unhappy, either,”_ she says. _“But this is part of what I wanted, too….”_

One hand returns to her face in a gentle stroke. Rikhard’s cheeks burn the same, but he’s smiling even warmer.

There’s surely some better words either of them could whisper now, or still, something truly romantic, greater than their lust…

But they’ll have more chances to figure those out.

Taika leans back down for a kiss, simpler this time. She rises, and lowers, and the bench squeaks sharper now—and she rides him.

Within that kiss, Taika whispers harder again, _“Make me cum, Rikhard.”_

Rikhard’s throat tightens, and on instinct, he swallows hard. And there goes each their spit with him.

Taika lifts to his tip, smacks down to his base. Tries it faster. Takes him harder. The rhythm grows natural, and Taika’s ear twitches furiously at the obscene noises of her own doing, panting, squelching, creaking. It’s not—it’s not romantic anymore, the sounds, never as messy as she fantasized—but they’re wonderful, and she can’t stop _making_ them, and Rikhard _is_ big, he’s all _hers_.

Taika bounces over him, and it’s not even on purpose how constantly she tightens around him now. Rikhard pulls both his hands back around her, hugging her closer, holding just as tight. She mewls into his locked lips, and there’s no chance left that she can stop from reaching her climax slid _balls_ deep around him.

Foul, filthy, _better_ than satisfied—

Her eyes shoot open fully. She gasps. Her throat catches tight.

She can’t quite breathe anymore, nerves lighting on fire up her spine, not just cumming— _squeezing_ , cumming _on_ Rikhard, drenching him in her own squirted juices.

She buries her face in the crook over Rikhard’s shoulder, hiding herself a moment, whining through every shrill, quiet breath as she comes down.

She feels a hand come warm back over her nape, and Rikhard pets her. Pets, but… before, never even this much. He helps bring her back. Tilts closer over her, kisses her on the bare fuzz just below her ear.

The perfect temperature. It really does help.

Thoughts come back into reasonable pieces, and with them, one settles before all the rest. Taika frowns. She pushes slowly back up over Rikhard, momentarily indenting her little pawprints over his ribs. She raises her chin looking back down to him.

 _“You still haven’t spilled,”_ she says. _“Have you been holding back, or… did I do something wrong?”_

Breathing barely easier than she, Rikhard chuckles, “I’ve got practice. I shouldn’t cum first.”

Taika’s gaze narrows. She comes back to a grin after all.

_“I see.”_

No sense stopping now.

She straightens her shoulders, takes one deep breath, and now she’s obviously recollected. Prim. Then turns back around one more time, stepping mindfully for her footing. Nine white tails bush up consciously over her hind. She dips her face between her paws over the bench, presses her scalp and its long tufts against the door, and leaves ample room behind herself for tight-quartered company.

Face down, ass up. Presented.

She looks back at Rikhard without any twinkle in her eye. Just looking at what to have.

 _“That load belongs to me, Rikhard,”_ Taika says. _“Offer it.”_

Rikhard barely needs to be told. He pushes himself back up behind her, over her, hands reaching through her storm to take hold of the anchor of her flank, soft flesh and cool blood.

He lines up in a second. Taika grits her muzzle and braces her forehead against the old metal of the door, keeping exactly what face she’ll make all for herself. Her mound quivers against his tip, still sensitive, but she’s ready for more.

Ready for _actual_ rutting.

Without warning, Rikhard hammers inside.

In the same instant the first moan squeals out her lips, Taika is thrust even farther forward until her cheek is slammed and squished against the door instead, as she’s plowed into it. _Relentless_. Her spine rocks through every thrust and her tongue spills loose and she can’t even attempt finagling a paw over her mouth to stop the girlish vulpine _silly_ squeaks and shrill cries completely unladylike fucked out from her.

She _is_ still sensitive, but not nearly enough to stop him—she’s still so _close_.

Fucked against the door like her man will die if he doesn’t cum right now, panting, groaning, and she’s the only one capable of providing him the tight perfect hole for release. Like it’s by her command alone she’s released the animal inside him.

She wants to be sore the next morning. She wants his cock rubbed _raw_ inside her tonight.

 _“More—gently! More, but—gentler,”_ she squeaks, even telepathically.

Mostly sore and raw.

Rikhard slows down, but pauses only on the outward stroke, leaving barely half his cock plugged wet before a respite. Taika readies to bark not _so_ gentle, but without instruction Rikhard holds firm and tugs her whole body slowly backward, giving breathing room back to her.

Like this, he parts a gap in her storm of tails and leans all the way down over her, resting his weight carefully over hers. He braces one arm beside her, and it nearly embarrasses Taika after all this, but Rikhard’s hot breath falls over her cheek in a tone she’s never heard from him before.

“You’re so beautiful,” he mutters. “Taika, you’re so hot inside….”

Without permission, he goes at it again. Without asking, he goes slow and _steady_. Every thrust is deliberate, timed. He works his hips and pumps her at new angles, prods bundles of nerves brand new to every coming moment, _explores_ her.

He gasps again, twitching inside her, leaving Taika to wish for a pillow to bite down on, something, anything, to keep hidden this one long moan she can’t stop from _mewling_ anymore.

Rikhard’s chest beats above her spine, and he grunts, “Can I cum inside…?”

Not thinking any words through before they cross, Taika gasps, _“I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”_

Rikhard’s arm tightens beside her, and now he’s the one bracing himself.

Faster for a moment, every thrust deliberately _harder_ , he slams home. Ragged gasps echo straight into her ear, and in his groan deep and long, Taika experiences with full clarity the feeling of being held tight and filled to the _brim_.

His semen boils. He throbs the thickest yet. She can feel every _spurt_ entering her, spilling directly into her belly.

And in the seconds past this, breathing heavy, without even being told, Rikhard’s hand wraps around down Taika’s hip and his fingers squeeze gently around her clitoris.

Taika’s mewl boils just the same into a yip, and he rubs her _warmer_ again, sweaty, teasing her to her _next_ finish—

Squirt spills just as easy out around him, and through one last squeak cut off halfway in her throat, Taika cums the filthiest she’s ever felt. Her toes all flex rigid over the bench and this time her claws pierce right through the vinyl, not a thought in her head able to stop herself from leaving a permanent mark in the truck.

Fully embraced, hugged by and still wrapped tight around Rikhard, twitching and pulsing….

This is her favorite now.

And in a minute more, yes, hold on, wait—here’s the rest of the world again.

Oh. What a mess.

It’s strangely fast she comes back to her senses, as far as she would have guessed, but… even stranger how she still feels so pleasant afterward.

It’s fully dark out now. The windows—she can just barely tell they really are all fogged up now, just like on television.

This is okay.

Rikhard keeps gasping small above her, hand removed from her clit and pulled back up to her shoulder, now rubbing it idly instead. His sweat runs freely down Taika’s fur. They’re both back in their right minds, and even still, he pushes closer for a kiss on her cheek.

He whispers, “It gets even better in a real bed.”

Too tired for a giggle, but Taika grins without pretense. There’s a crick in her neck forming already, but she nudges her face closer toward his.

 _“Good,”_ she says. _”Because we’re going to need to air out the whole truck….”_

Rikhard chuckles for the both of them, maybe, then breathes heavier for it.

“I really hope this doesn’t come out the wrong way, for right here, like this…”

He strokes stray hair off her face, knuckles brushing slow over her clip. Then he dips back to her neck, buries his lips back in her trim fluff.

Quietly even for how he’s muffled himself, just loud enough for her:

“I love you, Taika.”

He drips from her already, and _that_ sensation, Taika is acutely aware of—but it doesn’t feel as important anymore.

She closes her eyes, paws relaxing even as her pads stick somewhat to the sweaty vinyl. But she’s not blushing anymore.

She’s warm here. She smiles.

_“I love you too, Rikhard.”_

 

 

Morning light’s been at it a while by this hour, soon breaking into noontime. Taika stands on the lawn before her childhood home beside Rikhard on her one side, Hadewych on her other.

It’s been a little while again. The snow’s long since melted. No bags of trash out in the yard today, though, or in the truck parked behind them.

No more of that. Not anymore.

 **THE WHOLE PLACE.**  
**STATUS: SOLD.**  
(for cheap. it’s still in bad shape.)

Hadewych’s the first to sigh, fists bundled in her pockets, breath not clinging so much anymore in the open air. She looks the house up and down, and with her chin held high, says, “Fuck this place.”

Rikhard’s coat is tucked over his loosely folded arms, but he’s smiling, at least.

“Fuck this place,” he says.

Taika’s smile is somewhat smaller than his, if not settled beneath a warmer twinkle in her eye. There’s one more hair clip nudged beside the first now, a matte white, and there’s no strays at all sneaking toward her face anymore.

She says, _“Agreed.”_

Another great big sigh from someone or another, either or, and Rikhard looks to Hadewych. He says, “Not sticking around either, right?”

Hadewych grunts.

“Fuck no. Gettin’ the hell out of here. Sick of bumpkin town. Mama needs to try the city once in her life, too, find somebody for her again….”

More cautiously, she says, “And I can try to find a girl next time.”

Rikhard’s brow only nudges upward. “Less drama, you think?”

Hadewych smirks—she pulls a hand up to the back of his head, scuffles his hair fast and messy.

“More of that to play with, I’m hoping.”

Rikhard brushes a hand back over his hair as Hadewych retreats from it, her own loose locks shifting over her shoulders in the motion.

“You two dummies ever gonna come visit around here again, do the old-time’s-sake thing?” she asks, stuffing her gloveless fingers back in her pocket.

Rikhard shrugs, though he says, “Probably not.”

Hadewych grunts. “Good.”

Taika looks over to Hadewych next and says, _“Let us know where you find your new place. We’ll need to call somewhere new to settle down, too, eventually.”_

Hadewych rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”

She turns back to her car parked beside the truck, and calls back while she strolls, “Tell your mom to choke on her own shit for me next time you dummies go see her.”

With just a glance back over as she slides into the driver’s seat and reaches for the door handle—“See you.”

Door slams, smaller engine hums, and slowly, those wheels crunch back over the gravel off onto the road, away.

For the few seconds they watch Hadewych go, Rikhard next looks back down to Taika.

“Still three weeks until our next tournament. That’s a lot of time for exploring new places.”

Taika eyes him back with closer a smirk than a smile.

_“Someplace warm.”_

Rikhard tilts his head forward again and pulls a face, cheeks puffing before he exhales. “That’ll be a long drive.”

Taika’s lips turn even slicker.

_“I like that.”_

Rikhard glances back to her. Taika narrows her gaze. He smiles again.

He bows an inch and raises one hand flat toward the truck, beckoning, and follows Taika’s lead over to the passenger side. He gets her door, she loads in, and he closes it back gently before strolling around to his side.

Taika’s grown fond of the noise as this older engine growls awake again, ready to roll. Ready for more.

Rikhard pulls into reverse, back into drive, and they’re off, too.

It’s early, still, but as they rattle down the road, Taika’s head drifts naturally toward the window. Just resting. It’s sunny out, but not so much she can’t close her eyes despite the jostling—she’ll wake up when they get somewhere.

She doesn’t have trouble sleeping anymore.

 

_The End._


End file.
